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ARMENIAN  ATROCITIES 

THE  MURDER  OF  A  NATION 


fc*  _ 

ARNOLDT^J.     TOYNBEE 

Of  /,*  <r    ,,.    -  V- 

4  t 
WITH  A  SPRHCh  ORUVRkHB  BY 

■i  lordbryce''    r> 


IN     THE     HOUSE     OF     LORDS 


ifornia 

)nal 

ity 


HODDHR    &    STOUQHTON, 

London.        New  York.        Toronto. 

MCMXV. 


WAYNE  S.  VUCINICM 
GEISa  LIBRARY  Q  - 


.•-'.     ..-_*     i'    :«         c.& 


A      MAP 

displaying* 
THE    SCENE    OF    THE    ATROCITIE& 


Evtry  place  mar  this  map,  villi  the  exception 

deportations,  or    m  or    both,  between  April   and  N 

The  nine  places  underlined  were   the  destinations  mat 
■>•  for  death. 

*  Dhitnotika,  Malgara,  and  Keshan,  ia  Thrace,  are  too  far 


tided     in     square     brackets,     has     been     the     scene     of    either 

*&*  .  .     . 

"such  of  the  deported  Armenians   as    reached    them,  as  waiting' 


appear  oa  this  map,  but  they  must  be  added  to  the  list. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAG8. 
5 


Statement  by  Lord  Bryce 
I.— Armenia  before  the  Massacres       ...    17 
II.— The  Plan  op  the  Massacres  ... 

HI.— The  Road  to  Death        

IV.— The  Journey's  End  

V.— False  Excuses        

VI.— Murder  Outright 

YIL— The  Toll  of  Death  

VIII. The  Attitude  of  Germany 


26 
39 

56 
69 
83 
93 

106 


THE    ARMENIAN    MASSACRES. 

By  LORD  BRYCE.* 


As  His  Majesty's  Government  have,  of  course, 
been  unable  to  obtain,  except  from  one  or  two 
quarters,  such  as  the  Consul  at  Tiflis  quoted  by 
Lord  Cromer,  any  official  information  with  regard 
to  what  has  been  passing  in  Armenia  and  Asiatic- 
Turkey,  I  think  it  right  to  make  public  some 
further  information  which  has  reached  me  from 
various  sources — sources  which  I  can  trust, 
though  for  obvious  reasons  I  cannot,  by  men- 
tioning them  here,  expose  my  informants  to 
danger.  The  accounts  come  from  different  quarters, 
but  they  agree  in  essentials,  and  in  fact  confirm 
one  another.  The  time  is  past  when  any 
harm  can  be  done  by  publicity  ;  and  the  fuller 
publicity  that  is  given  to  the  events  that  have 
happened  the  better  it  will  be,  because  herein  lies 


*  The  version  here  printed  embodies  Lord  Bryce's  owr 
revision  and  enlargement  of  the  official  report  of  hit 
epeech  delivered  in  the  House  of  Lords  on  October  6tb 
1915. 


the  only  possible  chance  that  exists  of  arresting 
tlies"  massacres,  if  they  have  not  yet  been  com* 
pleted. 

I  am  grieved  to  say  that  such  information  Us  has 
reached  mc  from  several  quarters  goes  to  show  that 
the  number  of  those  who  have  perished  in  the 
various  ways  to  which  I  shall  refer  is  very  targe. 
It  lias  been  estimated  at  the  figure  of  800,000. 
Though  hoping  that  figure  to  be  tar  beyond  the 
mark,  \  cannot  venture  to  pronounce  it  incredible, 
for  there  has  beeu  an  unparalleled  destruction  of 
life  all  over  the  country  from  the  frontiers  of  Persia 
to  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  only  a  very  few  of  the  cities 
on  the  Aegean  Coast  having  so  far  escaped.  This 
is  so,  because  the  proceedings  taken  have  been  so 
carefully  premeditated  and  systo  maticaUy  carried 
out  with  a  ruthless  efficiency  previously  unknown 
among  the  Turks.  The  massacres  are  the  result  of 
a   policy    which,  as    far   as    cau   1  taint   !.  has 

n  entertained  for  some  considerable  time  by  the 
gang  of  unscrupulous  adventurers  who  arc  now 
in  possession  of  the  Government  of  the  Turkish 
Kmpire.      Tin-'  ted  to  pul  ir  in  practice  until 

they  thought  the  favourable  moment  had  come,  and 
that  moment  seems  to  have  arrived  ab  >ut  the  month 
of  April.  That  was  the  time  when  the-*.*  orders 
were  issued,  orders  which  cam.'  down  in  every  case 
from  Constantinople,  and  which  the  officials  found 


7 

themselves    obliged     to     carry    out    on    pain    of 
dismissal. 

There  was  no  Moslem  passion  against  the  Ar- 
menian Christians.  All  was  done  by  the  will  of 
the  Government,  and  done  not  from  any  religious 
fanaticism,  but  simply  because  they  wished,  for 
reasons  purely  political,  to  get  rid  of  a  non-Moslem 
element  which  impaired  the  homogeneity  of  the 
Empire,  and  constituted  an  element  that  might  not 
always  submit  to  oppression.  All  that  I  have 
learned  confirms  what  has  already  been  said  else- 
where, that  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  in 
this  case  Musulman  fanaticism  came  into  play  at 
all.  So  far  as  can  be  made  ont,  though  of  course 
the  baser  natures  have  welcomed  and  used  the 
opportunities  for  plunder  which  slaughter  and 
deportations  afford,  these  massacres  have  been 
viewed  by  the  better  sort  of  religions  Moslems 
with  horror  rather  than  with  sympathy.  It  would 
be  too  much  to  say  that  they  have  often  attempted 
to  interfere,  but  at  any  rate  they  do  hot  seem  to 
have  shown  approval  of  the  conduct  of  the  Turkish 
Government. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  precepts  of  Islam  which 
justifies  the  slaughter  which  has  been  perpetrated.  I 
am  told  on  good  authority  that  high  Moslem  religious 
authorities  condemned  the  massacres  ordered  by 
Abdul   Hamid,  and  these  are  far  more  atrocious. 


In  some  cases  the  Governors,  being  pious  and 
humane  men,  refused  to  execute  the  orders  that 
had  reached  them,  and  endeavoured  to  give  what 
protection  they  could  to  the  unfortunate  Armenians. 
In  two  cases  I  have  heard  of  the  Governors  being 
immediately  dismissed  for  refusing  to  obey  the 
orders.  Others  more  pliant  were  substituted,  and 
the  massacres  were  carried  out. 

As  I  have  said,  the  procedure  was  exceedingly 
systematic.  The  whole  Armenian  population  of 
each  town  or  village  was  cleared  out,  by  a  house-to- 
house  search.  Every  inmate  was  driven  into  the 
street.  Some  of  the  men  were  thrown  into  prison, 
where  they  were  put  to  death,  sometimes  with 
torture  ;  the  rest  of  the  men,  with  the  women  and 
children,  were  marched  out  of  the  town.  When 
they  had  got  some  little  distance  they  were 
separated,  the  men  being  taken  to  some  place 
among  the  hills  where  the  soldiers,  or  the  Kurdish 
tribes  who  were  called  in  to  help  in  the  work 
of  slaughter,  despatched  them  by  shooting  or 
bayonetting.  The  women  and  children  and  old 
men  were  sent  off  under  convoy  of  the  lowest 
kind  of  soldiers — many  of  them  just  drawn  from 
gaols — to  their  distant  destination,  which  was 
sometimes  one  of  the  unhealthy  districts  in  the 
centre  of  Asia  Minor,  but  more  frequently  the  large 
desert  in  the  province  of  Der  el  Zor,  which  lies  east  of 


Aleppo,  iii  the  direction  of  the  Euphrates.  They  were 
driven  along  by  the  soldiers  day  after  day.  ;ill  on 
loot,  beaten  or  left  behind  to  perish  if  they  could 
not  keep  up  with  the  caravan  :  many  fell  by  the 
way,  and  many  died  of  hunger.  No  provisions 
were  given  them  by  the  Turkish  Government,  and 
they  had  already  been  robbed  of  everything  thej 
possessed.  Not  a  i'rw  of  the  women  were  stripped 
naked  and  made  to  travel  in  that  condition  beneath 
aborning  sun.  Some  of  the  mothers  went  mad 
and  threw  away  their  children,  being  unable  to 
carry  them  Further.  The  caravan  route  was 
marked  by  a  line  of  corpses,  and  comparatively 
few  seem  to  have  arrived  at  the  destinations 
Avhich  had  been  prescribed  for  them — chosen,  no 
doubt,  because  return  was  impossible  and  because 
there  was  little  prospect  that  any  would  survive 
their  hardships.  E  have  had  circumstantial 
accounts  of;  these,  deportations  which  bear  internal 
evidence  of  being  veracious,  and  I  was  told  by 
an  American  friend  who  lias  lately  returned 
from  Constantinople  that  he  had  heard  accounts 
at  Constantinople,  confirming  fully  those  which 
had  come  to  me,  and  that  what  had  struck 
him  was  the  comparative  calmness  with  which 
these  atrocities  were  detailed  by  those  who  had 
first-hand  knowledge  of  them.  Tilings  which  we 
find  scarcely  credible  excite  little  surprise  in 
Turkey.       Massacre    was    the    ov<h>v   of    the    day 


10 

in   Eastern  Ruinelia  in   1876,  and,  in  1895-6,  in 
Asiatic  Turkey. 

When  the  Armenian  population  was  driven  from 
its  homes,  many  of  the  women  were  not  killed,  but 
reserved  for  a  more  humiliating  fate.  They  were 
mostly  seized  by  Turkish  officers  or  civilian 
officials,  and  consigned  to  their  harems.  Others 
were  sold  in  the  market,  but  only  to  a  Moslem 
purchaser,  for  they  were  to  be  made  Moslems  by 
force.  Never  again  would  they  see  parents  or 
husbands — these  Christian  women  condemned  at  one 
stroke  to  slavery,  shame  and  apostasy.  The  boys 
and  girls  were  also  very  largely  sold  into  slavery, 
at  prices  sometimes  of  only  ten  to  twelve  shillings, 
while  other  boys  of  tender  age  were  delivered  to 
dervishes,  to  be  carried  off  to  a  sort  of  dervish 
monastery,  and  there  forced  to  become  Musulmans. 

To  oive  one  instance  of  the  thorough  and 
remorseless  way  in  which  the  massacres  were  carried 
out,  it  may  suffice  to  refer  to  the  case  of  Trebizond, 
a  case  vouched  for  by  the  Italian  Consul  who  was 
present  when  the  slaughter  was  carried  out,  his 
country  not  having  then  declared  war  against 
Turkey.  Orders  came  from  Constantinople  that 
all  the  Armenian  Christians  in  Trebizond  were  to 
be  killed.  Many  of  the  Moslems  tried  to  save  their 
Christian  neighbours,  and  offered  them  shelter  in 
their   houses,    but   the    Turkish    authorities    were 


11 

implacable.     Obeying  the  orders  which  they  had 
received,    they    hunted    out    all    the    Christians, 
gathered  them  together,  and  drove  a  great  crowd 
of  them   down  the  streets  of  Trebizond,   past  the 
fortress,  to  the  edge  of  the  sea.     There  they  were 
all  put  on  board  sailing   boats,  carried  out  some 
distance  on  the  Black  Sea,  and  there  thrown  over- 
board and  drowned.     Nearly  the  whole  Armenian 
population  of  from  8,000  to  10,000  were  destroyed — 
some   in   this  way,    some   by  slaughter,  some    by 
being   sent   to   death   elsewhere.     After  that,  any 
other  story  becomes  credible  ;  and  I  am  sorry  to 
say  that  all  the  stories  that  I  have  received  con- 
tain similar  elements  of  horror,  intensified  in  some 
cases  by  stories  of  shocking  torture.     But  the  most 
pitiable  case  is  not  that  of  those  whose  misery  was 
ended    by  swift  death,   but   of   those   unfortunate 
women  who,  after  their  husbands  had  been  killed 
and  their  daughters  violated,  were  driven  out  with 
their  young  children  to  perish  in  the  desert — where 
they  have  no  sustenance,  and  where  they  are  the 
victims  of  the  wild  Arab  tribes  around  them.     It 
would  seem  that  three-fourths  or  four-fifths  of  the 
whole  nation  has  been  wiped  out,  and  there  is  no 
case   in    history,   certainly  not   since  the  time    of 
Tamerlane,  in    which  any  crime  so  hideous   and 
upon  so  large  a  scale  has  been  recorded. 

Let  me  add,  because  this  is  of  some  importance  in 


12 

viuw  of  the  excuses  which,  as  we  understand,  the 
German  Government  are  putting  forward,  and  which 
their  Ambassador  in  Washington  is  stated  to  have 
given,  when  he  talked  about  "  the  suppression  of 
riots/'  for  the  conduct  of  those  who  are  their  allies, 
that  there  is  no  ground  for  the  suggestion  that 
there  had  been  any  rising  on  the  part  of  the 
Armenians.  A  certain  number  of  Armenian  volun- 
teers have  fought  on  the  side  of  the  Russians  in 
the  Caucasian  Army,  but  they  came,  as  I  have 
been  informed,  from  the  Armenian  population 
of  Trans- Caucasia.  It  may  be  that  some  few 
Armenians  crossed  the  frontier  in  order  to  tight 
alongide  their  Armenian  brethren  in  Trans -Caucasia 
for  Russia,  but  at  any  rate,  the  volunteer  corps 
which  rendered  such  brilliant  service  to  the 
Russian  Army  in  the  first  part  of  the  war  was 
composed  of  Russian  Armenians  living  in  the 
Caucasus.  Wherever  the  Armenians,  almost  wholly 
unarmed  as  they  were,  have  fought,  they  have 
fought  in  self-defence  to  defend  their  families  and 
themselves  from  the  cruelty  of  the  ruffians  who 
constitute  what  is  called  the  Government  of  the 
country.  There  is  no  excuse  whatever  upon  any 
such  ground  as  some  German  authorities  and 
newspapers  allege,  for  the  conduct  of  the  Turkish 
Government.  Their  policy  of  slaughter  and  depor- 
tation   has    been    wanton     and     unprovoked.      It 


13 

appears  to  be  simply  an  application  of  the  maxim 
once  enunciated  by  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid  :  "  The 
way  to  get  rid  of  the  Armenian  question  is  to 
get  rid  of  the  Armenians  "  ;  and  the  policy  of 
extermination  has  been  carried  out  with  far  more 
thoroughness  and  with  far  more  bloodthirsty 
completeness  by  the  present  heads  of  the  Turkish 
Administration — they  describe  themselves  as  the 
Committee  of  Union  and  Progress — than  it  was  in 
the  time  of  Abdul  Hamid. 

There  are  still,  I  believe,  a  few  places  in  which 
the  Armenians,  driven  into  the  mountains,  are 
defending  themselves  as  best  they  can.  About 
5,000  were  taken  off  lately  by  French  cruisers  on 
the  coast  of  Syria,  and  have  now  been  conveyed  to 
Egypt,  and  they  tell  us  that  in  the  heights  of 
Sassoon  and  in  Northern  Syria,  possibly  also  in 
the  mountains  of  Cilicia,  there  are  still  a  few  bands, 
with  very  limited  provision  of  arms  and  munitions, 
valiantly  defending  themselves  as  best  they  can 
against  their  enemies.  The  whole  nation,  therefore, 
is  not  yet  extinct,  so  far  as  regards  these  refugees 
in  the  mountains,  and  those  who  have  escaped  into 
Trans- Caucasia  ;  and  I  am  sure  we  are  all  heartily 
agreed  that  every  effort  should  be  made  that  can 
be  made  to  send  help  to  the  unfortunate  survivors, 
hundreds  of  whom  are  daily  perishing  by  want  and 


14 

disease.     It  is  all  that  we  in  England  can  now  do; 
let  us  do  it,  and  do  it  quickly. 

I  have  not  so  far  been  able  to  obtain  any 
authentic  information  regarding  the  part  said  to 
have  been  taken  by  German  officials  in  directing  or 
encouraging  these  massacres,  and  therefore  it  would 
not  be  right  to  express  any  opinion  on  the  subject. 
But  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  only  chance  of 
saving  the  unfortunate  remnants  of  this  ancient 
Christian  nation  is  to  be  found  in  an  expression 
of  the  public  opinion  of  the  world,  especially  that 
of  neutral  nations,  which  may  possibly  exert  some 
influence  even  upon  the  German  Government  and 
induce  them  to  take  the  only  step  by  which  the 
massacres  can  be  arrested.  They  have  hitherto 
stood  by  with  callous  equanimity.  Let  them  now 
tell  the  Turkish  Government  that  they  are  prepar- 
ing for  themselves  a  well-earned  retribution,  and 
that  there  are  some  things  which  the  outraged 
opinion  of  the  world  will  not  tolerate. 

BRYCE. 


15 


THE   EVIDENCE. 


Tin  '/following  statement  is  based  upon  uuimpeaeh- 

able  testimonies.  There  are  the  narratives  of 
missionaries — Germans  as  well  as  Swiss,  Americans 
and  other  citizens  of  neutral  countries.  There  are 
reports  from  consuls  on  the  spot,  including,  again, 
the  representatives  of  the  German  Empire.  There 
are  numerous  private  letters  and  letters  published  in 
the  Allied  and  the  neutral  press,  which  record  the 
evidence  of  eye-witnesses  as  to  what  they  have  seen. 
And  there  are  the  scries  of  personal  depositions 
which  have  already  been  published  by  a  Com- 
mittee of  distinguished  citizens  of  the  United  States, 
The  nmre  closely  these,  independent  pier  <s  0f  evidence 
are  examined,  the  more  precisely  they  prove  to  bear 
cue  another  out,  sometimes  even  in  the  minutest  di  tails. 
The  facts  contained  in  them  are  here  presented  with 
full  assurance  of  their  truth.  It  is  of  course  im- 
possible to  name  such  sources  of  evidence  as  have  not 
yet  been  named  in  print,  because  this  would  expose 
to  imminent  danger  such  of  them  as  are  within  the 
Tu ) 7t' ish  dominions. 


17 


I.  ARMENIA    BEFORE    THE 
MASSACRES. 

The  German  War  began  by  working  horror 
and  desolation  in  unaccustomed  places — peaceful 
Belgium  and  the  industrial  heart  of  France. 
Latterly  it  has  also  succeeded  in  aggravating  the 
wounds  of  countries  already  stricken  sore.  Poland 
has  learnt  to  envy  her  condition  before  August, 
1914  ;  the  Balkan  peoples  have  been  robbed  of  their 
last  hope  of  fraternity  ;  and  now,  on  the  Eastern 
fringe  of  Germany's  arena,  the  intermittent  sufferings 
of  the  Armenian  race  have  culminated  in  an 
organised,  cold-blooded  attempt  on  the  part  of 
its  Turkish  rulers  to  exterminate  it  once  and  for 
all  by  methods  of  inconceivable  barbarity  and 
wickedness. 

The  Armenians  are  perhaps  the  oldest  established 

of  the  civilised  races  in  Western   Asia,  and  they 
are  certainly  the  most  vigorous  at  the  present  day 
Their  home  is  the  tangle  of  high  mountains  be- 
tween  the    Caspian,    the  Mediterranean,    and  the 
Black  Seas.     Here  the  Armenian  peasant  has  lived 


18 

from  time  immemorial  the  hardworking  life  he  was 
leading  till  the  eve  of  this  ultimate  catastrophe. 
Here  a  strong,  civilised  Armenian  kingdom  was  the 
first  state  in  the  world  to  adopt  Christianity  as  its 
national  religion.  Here  Church  and  people  have 
maintained  their  tradition  with  extraordinary 
vitality  against  wave  upon  wave  of  alien  conquest 
from  every  quarter. 

For  many  centuries  past,  however,  Armenia  has 
not  been  co-extensive  with  the  Armenian  race  ;  for 
in  the  Eastern  provinces  of  the  Turkish  Empire 
we  find  the  same  phenomenon  of  racial  inter- 
mixture and  disintegration  as  has  been  produced  in 
the  Balkans  by  the  operation  of  the  Turkish  regime. 
Under  the  malignant  administration  of  the  Moslem 
conqueror,  the  Kurds,  also  an  ancient  race,  but  one 
which  has  remained  uncivilised,  have  spread  out 
from  their  old  seats  over  the  Armenian's  ancestral 
mountains.  They  prefer  a  wilderness  for  the 
pasturage  of  their  sheep  and  goats,  and  look 
askance  at  the  neat  villages  and  well  -  tilled 
fields  of  the  original  inhabitants  of  the  land. 
Thus  the  Armenian  has  lost  the  undivided  posses- 
sion of  his  proper  country  ;  but  he  has  recompensed 
himself  by  finding  many  new  homes  beyond  its 
borders.  For  the  Armenian  is  not  only  an  indus- 
trious peasant,  he  has  a  talent  for  handicraft  and 
intellectual  pursuit?.     The  most  harassed  village  in 


19 

the  mountains  would  never  despair  of  its  village 

school,  and  these  schools  were  avenues  to  a  wider 
world.  He  has  also  that  talent  for  commerce 
which  the  Jew  displays  in  Eastern  Europe  and 
the  Greek  in  the  Levant,  and  he  plays  a  similar 
role  himself,  as  the  skilled  workman  and  the  man 
of  business,  in  the  interior  of  Asiatic  Turkey.  Every 
town  in  Northern  Syria  and  Anatolia  had,  eight 
months  ago,  its  populous,  prosperous  Armenian 
quarter — the  focus  of  local  skill,  intelligence  and 
trade,  as  well  as  of  the  town's  commercial  relations 
with  Constantinople  and  Europe.  At  Constanti- 
nople itself,  the  Armenian  population  had  risen  to 
more  than  200,000,  and  there  were  nearly  as  many 
in  Tiflis,  the  capital  of  Russian  Trans-Caucasia. 
Trans-Caucasia,  in  fact,  with  its  orderly  Christian 
government  and  its  promising  economic  develop- 
ment, had  become  a  second  home  of  the  Armenian 
race.  The  Katholikos,  or  head  of  the  Armenian 
Church,  resides  in  Russian  territory,  at  Etchmiad- 
zin,  and  there  were  perhaps  750,000  Armenians  on 
the  northern  side  of  the  Russo-Turkish  frontier. 
Eight  months  ago,  however,  these  represented  a 
minority  of  the  race,  for  about  1,200,000  still 
remained  under  Turkish  rule.  Rather  more  than 
half  this  majority  was  to  be  found  in  the  original 
Armenia,  east  of  the  upper  Euphrates  and  north 
of  the  Tigris.     The  rest  were  scattered  through  all 


20 

the  towns  between  the  Euphrates  and  Constanti- 
nople. Their  numbers  were  especially  strong  in 
the  Adana  district  of  Cilicia,  a  rich  plain  bordering 
on  the  north-east  corner  of  the  Mediterranean,  while 
in  the  mountain  fastnesses  above  the  plain  the  hill 
towns  of  Zeitoun  and  Hadjin  were  flourishing 
centres  of  Armenian  life. 

The  condition  of  these  twelve  hundred  thousand 
people — about  <S  per  cent,  of  the  total  population  of 
the  Turkish  Empire — had  always  been  unenviable. 
They  were  treated  as  a  subject  race,  and  lacked  the 
right  of  bearing  arms,  a  status  which,  in  a  lawless 
country,  left  them  peculiarly  at  the  mercy  of  their 
individual  Moslem  neighbours.  But  there  were 
advantages  to  write  off  against  such  drawbacks. 
Among  a  rather  stupid,  conservatively  inclined 
Turkish  population,  their  commercial  genius  gave 
them  a  virtual  monopoly  of  trade,  and  a  corre- 
spondingly large  share  in  the  wealth  of  the  country. 
Hard-earned  gains  might  often  in  individual  cases 
be  reft  away  by  local  tyranny  ;  but  the  Armenian's 
gifts  were  really  indispensable  to  his  meters,  and 
their  general  recognition  of  this  fact  was  shown  by 
the  general  toleration  he  received  from  them.  In 
fact,  the  subject,  Christian,  intellectual  Armenian 
and  the  dominant,  Moslem,  agrarian  Turk  had 
settled  down  into  an  effective,  if  rough  and 
ready,  equilibrium. 


21 

This  old-established  adjustment  of  the  Armenian 
problem  was  first  assailed  by  Sultan  Abd-ul- 
Hamid.  His  Balkan  experience  had  taught  him 
the  policy  of  keeping  the  races  of  his  Empire  in 
hand  by  setting"  them  to  massacre  one  another. 
Applying  it  to  his  Eastern  provinces,  where  he 
feared  that  the  intelligent  and  'active  Christian 
population  might  seek  liberty  as  the  Bulgars  had 
sought  it  and  obtained  it  at  Russia's  hands  in 
1878,  he  redoubled  exactions,  introduced  new 
oppressions,  and  ended  by  enlisting  the  services  of 
the  Kurdish  tribesmen  as  "  Hamidieh  Cavalry." 
Official  badges  and  modern  rifles  were  served 
out  to  the  Kurds  in  their  new  capacity,  and 
they  were  initiated  into  their  welcome  duty. 
The  results  were  the  unprecedented  Armenian 
massacres  under  official  direction,  that  horrified 
the  civilized  world  in  1895  and  1896,  and 
evoked  from  Gladstone  the  last  public  speech 
of  his  old  age.  When  Abd-ul-Hamid  was  over- 
thrown in  1908  and  the  "  Committee  of  Union  and 
Progress "  proclaimed  constitutional  government 
and  equal  civil  rights  for  all  Ottoman  citizens, 
there  seemed  hope  of  better  things  ;  but  the 
Ottoman  Constitution  was  followed  in  less  than  a 
year  by  the  equally  atrocious  though  less  wide- 
spread massacres  of  Adana.     Even  that  paroxysm 


passed,  but  it  left  a  chronic  evil  behind.  Mr.  Noel 
Buxton,  who  travelled  in  Turkish  Armenia  a  few 
months  before  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war, 
reported  that  the  Young  Turks  had  recklessly 
followed  the  Hamidian  policy  of  arming  the  Kurds, 
and  that  a  fresh  disaster  was  possible  at  any 
moment.  Then  came  the  war.  Turkey  entered  it 
on  the  German  side,  and  the  crimes  began  which 
will  be  narrated  in  the  following  pages. 

The  evidence  on  which  the  following  account  is 
based  is  drawn  from  various  quarters.  Some  of  it 
has  appeared  already  in  print.  A  smaller  part 
has  been  sent  privately  to  Lord  Bryce,  who  has 
many  personal  links  with  the  Armenian  people. 
It  agrees  completely  with  other  material  incor- 
porated in  the  Report  (published  in  full  in 
the  United  States  on  October  4th.  1915)  of 
the  American  Committee  of  Inquiry — a  body 
of  twenty-five  members,  including  two  ex- 
ambassadors  to  the  Porte,  and  f'>\\\'  directors 
of  American  mission  -  work  in  the  Ottoman 
Empire,  as  well  as  persons  of  such  individual 
eminence  as  Cardinal  Gibbons,  Bishops  Greer 
and  Rhinelander,  Dr.  Charles  W.  Eliot  (Ex- 
President  of  Harvard  University),  Mr.  Charles 
R.  Crane,  Mr.  Stephen  S.  Wise  and   Mr.  John  R. 


33 

Motfe.*  The  evidence  is  indeed  abundant  and 
direct,  and  it  is  also  appalling  in  the  uniformity 
with  which  it  unfolds  its  otherwise  scarcely 
credible  tale.  Part  of  it  is  from  the  mouth  of 
neutral  witnesses — European  or  American  travellers 
and  men  of  business  who  have  returned  from  the 
interior  of  Turkey  since  the  horrible  work  began, 
or  permanent  residents  sufficiently  protected  by 
their  status  to  be  able  to  communicate  what  they 
have  seen  on  the  >pot.  Testimony  of  this 
unequivocal  character  tonus  the  backbone  of  the 
American  Committee's  statement  ;  but  even  in 
these  eases  the  evidence  has  to  be  presented,  from 

•American  Committee  ox  Armenian  Atrocities. 

70,  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York, 
James  L.  Barton,!  Samuel  T.  Duttox, 

Chairman.  Secretary 

Charles  R.  Crane, 

Treasurer. 
Cleveland  H.  Dodge,  Frank  Mason  North. 

Charles  W.  Eliot.  Harry  V.  Osborn. 

James  Cardinal  Gibbons.  Rt.  Rev.  P.  Rhinelander. 

Rt.  Rev.  David  II.  Greer.  Karl  Davis  Robinson. 

Norman  Hapgood.  William  W.  Rockwell. 

William  1.  Haven.  Isaac  N.  Seligman. 

Maurice  H.  Harris.  William  Sloane. 

Arthur  Curtis  James.  Edward  Lincoln  Smith. 

Frederick  Lynch.  Oscar  S.  Strans. 

H.  Pereira  Mend  is.  Stanley  White. 

John  R.  jfclott  Stephen  S.  V, 


j Secretary  of  the  American  Mission?  Board. 


24 

motives  of  precaution,  in  an  anonymous  form,  and 
in  dealing  with  testimony  from  native  Armenian 
sources  the  necessity  for  the  strictest  reticence  i3 
even  more  apparent.  The  crime  has  been  com- 
mitted without  pretext,  but  no  excuse  for  continuing 
it  in  the  cases  of  individuals  who  had  exposed  its 
horrors,  would  come  amiss  to  its  authors  and 
organisers.  Nevertheless,  the  witness  of  the 
Armenians  to  their  own  sufferings  is  as  clear  as 
the  evidence  of  their  better  protected  friends. 
It  is  headed  by  the  statement  of  the  Katholikos 
himself,  transmitted  from  Russia  to  the  Armenian 
National  Defence  Union  in  the  U.S.,  and  pub- 
lished on  September  27th  in  the  American  press; 
and  his  words  are  borne  out  by  a  confidential 
letter  which  another  high  Armenian  ecclesiastic, 
resident  in  this  case  in  neutral  territory,  has 
received  from  a  prominent  fellow  -  countryman 
in  the  striken  area.  And  then  there  are  the 
refugees — the  remnant  of  the  nation  that  has 
found  safety  behind  the  Russian  lines  in  the 
Caucasus,  or  made  its  way  to  Egypt  across  the 
friendly  Mediterranean.  For  instance,  there  were 
the  4,200  Armenians — men,  women  and  children — 
from  Selefkeh,  the  port  of  Antioch,  whom  the 
French  cruiser  squadron  landed  safely  at  Port  Said  at 
the  end  of  September.  They  had  been  seven  weeks 
in  the  hills,  fighting  for  life  with  antiquated  guns 


and  scanty  ammunition,  and  with  their  backsto  the 
sea.  Against  Turkish  regulars  reinforced  by  all 
the  blackguards  of  the  Aleppo  slums,  their  chance 
seemed  desperate  ;  but  they  knew  it  was  the  only 
chance  they  had,  for  the  order  had  come  to  prepare 
within  a  week  for  deportation,  and  the  fate  of  all 
their  deported  kinsmen  from  Anatolia  was  before 
their  eyes.  But  this  is  to  anticipate  the  sequence 
of  the  narrative.  The  evidence  in  hand  has  been 
sufficiently  indicated,  and  it  will  be  better  to  set 
forth  the  whole  series  of  crimes  from  their 
beginning. 


26 


II    THE  PLAN  OF  THE  MASSACBES. 

The    entrance   of    Turkey    into    the    War    last 

Autumn     did     not     immediately    aggravate    the 

Armenians'  lot.    Young  Turk  policy  had  extended 

the  burden  of  military  service  to  the  Christian  as 

well  as  the  Moslem  population  ;  but  that  might  be 

regarded  in  the  light  of  a  privilege,  as  a  recognition 

of  the  equality  of  all  Ottoman  citizens  before  the  law. 

Moreover,  many  Armenians  had  paid  commutation 

in  lieu  of  enrolment.     It  has  been  said,  and  cannot 

be   emphasised   too    strongly,    that    the    race   was 

industrious,  prosperous,   devoted  to  the  works  of 

peace.     It  included  a  large  proportion  of  highly 

educated  men  and  not  a  few  educated  women,  who 

had  been  taught  in  the  schools  and  universities  of 

Europe,  or  in  the  excellent  colleges  of  the  American 

missions  ;  and  it  supplied  Turkey  with  that  class 

of  thinkers  and  contrivers,  teachers,    traders  and 

artificers,  which  gives  a  country  its  brain.*     The 

war,  again,  was  directed  against  Christian  powers, 

and  undertaken  by  those  who  had   massacred  their 

brethren  at  Adana  only  live  years  before.     For  the 

*  In  Russia  many  Armenians  have  achieved  distinction 
in  war  as  well,  for  eyaniple  Prince  Bagration,  Napoleon's 
opponent  in  1812,  and  Generals  Mel'ikoH"  and  Lazareil  in 
the  Russo-Turkish  War  of  18/7-8. 


27 

Armenians  it  was  not  a  war  of  patriotism  ;  so 
many  Armenian  men  remained  quietly  at  home, 
and  when  those  who  were  drafted  were  deprived 
of  their  arms  by  order  of  the  Government,  and 
brigaded  into  labour  battalions  to  work  on  the 
roads,  it  is  improbable  that  they  resented  the 
change  of  duty.  Thus  the  winter  passed  with 
little  foreboding  of  the  coming  spring. 

But  meanwhile  the  Government  at  Constan- 
tinople— if  Government  is  not  too  good  a  name  for 
Enver,  Talaat,  and  the  rest  of  that  "  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress"  which  Lord  Brycehas  justly 
described  as  a  "  gang  of  unscrupulous  ruffians," — 
meanwhile,  this  unprincipled  and  all  -  powerful 
organisation  was  working  out  its  plans,  and  it 
began  to  put  them  into  action  in  April. 

The  scheme  was  nothing  less  than  the  exter- 
mination  of  the  whole  Christian  population  within 
the  Ottoman  frontiers.  For  the  war  had  tem- 
porarily released  the  Ottoman  Government  from 
the  control,  slight  as  it  was,  which  the  Concert 
of  Europe  had  been  able  to  exert.  The  belligerents 
on  one  side  were  Turkey's  allies  and  very  good 
friends  ;  and  Enver,  looking  to  the  future,  relied 
upon  their  promised  victory  to  shield  himself  and 
his  accomplices  from  the  vengeance  of  the  Western 
powers  and  Russia,  which  had  always  stood 
between   the  malignant  hostility   of  the  Ottoman 


28 

Government  and  the  helplessness  of  its  Christian 
subjects.  The  denunciation  of  the  "  Capitula- 
tions" broke  down  the  legal  barrier  of  foreign  pro- 
tection, behind  which  many  Ottoman  Christians  had 
fennel  more  or  less  effective  shelter.  Nothing  re- 
mained but  to  use  the  opportunity  and  strike  a 
stroke  that  would  never  need  repetition.  "  After 
this,"  said  Talaat  Bey,  when  he  gave  the  final 
signal,  "  there  will  be  no  Armenian  question  for 
fi  ffcy  years." 

The  crime  was  concerted  very  systematically,  for 
there  is  evidence  of  identical  procedure  from  over 
fifty  places.  They  are  too  numerous  to  be  detailed 
here,  but  every  one  of  them"  is  shewn  on  the 
accompanying  map,  and  they  will  be  found  to 
include  every  important  town  in  Armenia  proper 
and  in  Eastern  Anatolia,  as  well  as  Ismid  and 
Bre-nssa  in  the  west,  not  to  speak  of  a  number  of 
places  in  Thrace.  There  is  no  object  in  multiply- 
ing the  monotonous  tale  of  horror,  for  the  uniform 
directions  from  Constantinople^  were  carried  out 

With    the    exception    of    six    small    villages    in    the 
(  iii.-fan  hills. 

|  "  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  believe  that  it  was  by 
order  of  the  Central  Government  that  the  Armenians 
driven  from  their  homes.  It  wag  only  at  Constanti- 
nople that  I  learnt  this  fact,  and  I  learnt  also  that  the 
pressure  brought  to  boar  by  the  Embassies  had  had  no 
effect." — Extract  from  a  letter  (written  by  an  Armenian 
Protestant  to  an  American  citizen)  which  was  published 
on  September  -1th,  1915,  bv  the  Armenian  paper 
"  Go&ehnag  "  of  New  York. 


29 

with  remarkable  exactitude  by  the  local  authori- 
ties. Only  two  cases  are  reported  of  officials  who 
refused  to  obey  the  Government's  instructions. 
One  was  the  local  governor  of  Everek,  in  the 
district  of  Kaisarieh,  and  he  was  at  once  replaced 
by  a  more  pliable  successor.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  kaimakam  of  another  place  replied  to  the 
protest  of  a  German  missionary  :  "  If  the  Law  and 
the  Sultan  were  to  forbid  it,  I  would  carry  out  the 
plan  in  spite  of  all,  and  do  as  I  .  please." 
(American  Committee's  Report.)*  In  general 
what  happened  was  this. 

On  a  given  day  the  streets  of  whatever  town  it 
might  be  were  occupied  by  the  local  gendarmerie 
with  fixed  bayonets,  and  the  Governor  summoned 
all  able-bodied  men  of  Armenian  race  that  had 
been  exempted  from  military  draft  to  present 
themselves  now  on  pain  of  death.  "  Able-bodied  " 
received  a  liberal  interpretation,  for  it  included  any 
male  between  fifteen  and  seventy  years  of  age,  and 
these  were  all  marched  out  of  the  town  by  the 
gendarmes.  They  had  not  far  to  go,  for  the 
gendarmerie  had  been  reinforced  for  the  purpose  from 
the  gaols,  and  the  brigands  and  Kurds  at  large  were 
waiting  in  the  hills.    They  were  waiting  to  murder 

*  Hereafter  referred  to  as  A.O.R. 


o 


0 


the  prisoners.     The  first  seconded  valley  witnessed 

their  wholesale  massacre,  and,  acquitted  of  their 
task,  the  gendarmes  marched  back  leisurely  into 
town. 

This  was  the  first  act.  It  precluded  the  pitiful 
possibility  of  resistance  to  the  second,  which 
was  of  a  more  ingenious  and  far  reaching  kind. 
The  women,  old  men  and  children  who  made  up 
the  remainder  of  the  Armenian  population,  were 
now  given  immediate  notice  of  deportation  within 
a  fixed  term — a  week  perhaps,  or  ten  days,  but 
commonly  a  week,  and  in  no  case  more  than  a 
fortnight.  They  were  to  be  unrooted,  whole 
households,  from  their  homes,  and  driven  off  to  an 
unknown  destination,  while  their  houses  and 
property  were  to  be  transferred  to  Moslems,  on  a 
plan  which  will  be  described  in  the  sequel. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  imagine  to  oneself  the 
implication  of  such  a  decree.  These  were  not 
savages,  like  the  Red  Indians  who  retired  before 
the  White  Man  across  the  American  continent. 
They  were  not  nomadic  shepherds  like  their 
barbarous  neighbours  the  Kurds.  They  were 
people  living  the  same  life  as  ourselves,  towns- 
people established  in  the  town  for  genera- 
tions  and  the  chief  authors  of  its  local  pros- 
perity. They  were  sedentary  people,  doctors 
and    lawyers    and     teachers,     business    men    and 


31 

ans  and  shopkeepers,  and  they  had  raised  solid 
monuments  to  their  intelligence  and  industry, 
costly  churches  and  well-appointed  schools.  Their 
women  were  as  delicate,  as  refined,  as  unused  to 
hardship  and  brutality  as  women  in  Europe  or  the 
United  States.  In  fact,  they  were  in  the  cl 
personal  touch  with  Western  civilisation,  for  many 
of  the  Armenian  centres  upon  which  the  crime  was 
perpetrated  had  been  served  by  the  American 
missions  and  colleges  for  at  least  fifty  years,  and 
were  familiar  with  the  fine  men  and  women  who 
directed  them. 

Communities  like  this,  after  being  mutilate  .1  by 
the  wholesale  conscription  or  assassination  of  the 
husbands  and  fathers,  were  now  torn  up  by  the 
roots  and  driven,  under  the  forlorn  leadership  of 
the  mothers  and  the  old  men,  into  an  exile  that 
was  to  terminate  in  a  death  of  unspeakable  horror. 

There  was  just  one  possible  loophole  of  escape, 
apostasy,  but  it  did  not  do  to  bid  for  it  too  eagerly. 
It  had  been  available  in  1895,  and  the  men  of  one 
town  on  the  Euphrates  now  sought  for  it:  to  avert 
their  doom.*  But  their  desperate  offer  was  refused  ; 
and  at  another  town  in  Anatolia  it  was  only 
accepted  on  the  inhuman  condition  of  surrendering 
their   children  below  the  age  of  twelve  years  to 

*  Hoping  to  return  to  Christianity  in  better  'lays. 


32 

the   Government,    to    be    educated    in    unknown 
"  orphanages  "  in  the  Moslem  faith. 

Of  course  these  orphanages  were  quite  hypo- 
thetical institutions.  There  were  dervish  convents, 
however,  which  were  real  and  terrible  enough. 
The  dervishes  are  communities  of  fanatical  Moslem 
devotees,  many  of  whom  lead  a  wandering  life  in 
the  interior  of  Anatolia- — a  barbaric  survival  of 
primitive  religion.  They  were  allowed  to  take 
their  choice  of  the  young  Armenian  boys,  and  one 
of  Lord  Bryce's  informants  describes  how  bands  of 
them  met  the  caravans  of  deported  Armenians  on 
their  road,  and  carried  off  children,  shrieking  with 
terror,  to  bring  them  up  as  Moslems  in  their  savage 
fraternity. 

In  one  place  "a  plan  was  formed  to  save  the 
children  by  placing  them  in  schools  or  orphanages, 
under  the  care  of  a  committee  organised  and  sup- 
ported by  the  Greek  Archbishop,  of  which  the  Vali 
was  president  and  the  Archbishop  vice-president, 
with  three  Mohammedan  and  three  Christian  mem- 
bers." (A.C.R.)  But  the  plan  was  rescinded  by 
orders  from  above  ;  and 

"  many  of  the  boys  appear  to  have  been  sent  to 
another  district,  to  be  distributed  among  the  farmers. 
The  best  looking  of  the  older  girls  are  kept  in  houses 
for  the  pleasure  of  members  of  the  gang  who  seem  to 
rule  affairs  here.  I  hear  on  good  authority  that  a 
member  of  the  '  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress ' 


33 

here  has  ten  of  fche  handsomest  girls  id  a  ii    i  le  in  the 
central  part  of  tbo  city,  for  the  Oft  -If  and 

his  friends."     (A.C.R.) 
The    Armenian  journal    '•  Horizon"    of    Tiflis, 

reported  in  its  issue  of  Sept.  4th  (Aug.  22nd   old 

style)  that :  — 

"  A  telegram  from  Bukaresc  states  thai  the  Turks 
have  sent  from  Anatolia  four  railway-vans  full  of 
Armenian  orphans  from  the  interior  of  the  country, 
to  distribute  them  among  the  Moslem  families.*1 

Such  was  the  fate  marked  out  for  the  Armenian 
children  who  were  young  enough  lor  assimilation  ; 
but  even  such  a  sacrifice  was  to  "reprieve"  the 
parents  who  consented  to  it  from  immediate  death 
alone,  and  not  from  the  lingering  torment  of 
deportation. 

Only  at  one  place  do  we  hear  that  the  victims 
were  given  the  prospect  of  ransoming  themselves 
completely  by  accepting  Islam  for  their  families 
and  themselves.  Here  the  witness  states  that 
"  The  offices  of  the  lawyer-  who  recorded  applica- 
tions were  crowded  with  people  petitioning  to 
become  Mohammedans.     Many  did  it  for  the  sake  of 

their  women  and  children "     (A.C.K.) 

But  their  escape  was  a  converts 

were  marched  out  of  the  town  like  the  rest,  and 
were  never  heard  of  again. 

The  majority  of  the  people  were  not  suffered  even 
to    play   with   hopes   of  security,   and   the    week 


u 

of  grace  was  occupied  by  heartrending  scenes. 
At  the  last  mentioned  town  "  people  made  prepara- 
tion for  carrying  out  the  Government's  orders  by 
selling  whatever  household  possessions  they  could 
in  the  streets.  Articles  were  sold  at  less  than 
10  per  cent,  of  their  usual  value,  and  Turks  from 
the  neighbouring  villages  filled  the  streets,  hunting 
for  bargains "  (A.C.R.)  In  this  instance  the 
Government  punished  any  Moslems  that  actually 
seized  articles  by  force  ;  but  in  general  the  authori- 
ties were  not  so  meticulous.  It  must  be  repeated 
that  the  Armenians  were  people  of  property, 
property  well  earned  by  intelligent  industry,  and 
the  indigent  Moslem  of  the  slums  had  always 
resented  the  prosperity  which  Allah  had  permitted 
to  the  subject  infidel.  Now  the  Moslem  was  tc 
come  into  his  own.  At  a  port  on  the  Cilician  coast 
"  sewing  machines  sold  for  1J-  medjidiehs  (about 
four  shillings  and  ninepence),  iron  bedsteads  for  a 
few  piastres,"  and  at  a  hitherto  flourishing  port 
on  the  Black  Sea  we  are  showm  a  spectacle  of 
wholesale  felony. 

"  The  thousand  Armenian  houses  in  the  town  are 
being  emptied  of  furniture  by  the  police  one  after 
the  other  .  .  .  ,  and  a  crowd  of  Turkish  women 
and  children  follow  the  police  about  like  a  lot  of 
vultures,  and  seize  anything  they  can  lay  their  hands 
on  ;  and  when  the  more  valuable  things  are  carried 
out  of  a  house  by  the  police,  they  rush  in  and  take 


35 

the  balance.  I  see  this  performance  every  day  with 
my  own  eyes.  I  suppose  it  will  take  several  weekg 
to  empty  all  the  houses,  and  then  the  Armenian 
shops  and  stores  will  be  cleared  out."     (A.C.R.) 

A  systematic  eradication  of  a  whole  people,  this, 
and  designed  to  that  end,  for  the  German  consul 
told  the  witness  that  "  He  did  not  believe  the 
Armenians  would  be  permitted  to  return  to  the 
city  in  question,  even  after  the  end  of  the  war." 
(A.C.R.) 

But  the  Armenians  gained  little  by  selling  up 
their  goods,  for  even  the  trifling  sums  they  realised 
were  more  than  they  were  permitted  to  carry  with 
them.  Their  journey  money  was  strictly  limited 
to  a  few  shillings,  and  in  fact  it  would  only  have 
exposed  them  to  pillage  by  their  guards  if  they 
had  attempted  to  carry  more  about  their  persons. 
Yet  if  they  could  not  realise  their  property,  there 
was  still  less  hope  of  transporting  it  with  them. 
In  many  cases  the  notice  was  too  short  for  selling 
out  or  packing  up  at  all,  and  this  seems  to  have 
been  especially  the  case  in  Cilicia. 

"  At  the  mountain  village  of  Geben,"  for  instance 
"  the  women  were  at  the  wash  -  tub,  and  were 
compelled  to  leave  their  wet  clothes  in  the  water  and 
take  the  road  barefuoted  and  half -clad,  just  as  they 
were.  In  some  cases  they  were  able  to  carry  part  of 
their  scanty  household  furniture  or  implements  of 
agriculture,  but  for  the  most  part  they  were  neither 
to  carry  anything  nor  to  sell  it,  even  where  there  was 
time  to  do  so."     (A.C.R.) 


36 

"  In  Hadjin  well-to-do  people,  who  Lad  prepared 
food  and  bedding  for  the  road,  were  obliged  to  leave 
it  in  the  street,  and  afterwards  suffered  greatly  from 
hrmger,"     (A.O30 

The  exiles  bad  reason  to  be  thankful  if  they  could 
tind  conveyance  for  their  own  persons.  Sometimes 
the  government  announced  that  it  would  provide 
an  ox-cart  for  each  family.  But  this  was  often 
only  another  opportunity  for  mocker}7.  In  one 
place,  where  the  people  had  been  given  notice  to 
depart  on  Wednesday,  the  carts  appeared  on  Tuesday 
;\r  3.30  a.m.,  and  the  people  were  ordered  to  leave 
at  once.  ':  Some  were  draped  from  their  beds 
without  even  sufficient  clothing."  In  other  cases 
no  provision  was  made  at  all.  For  example,  at  the 
aforementioned  city  on  the  Black  Sea  coast,  the 
Governor-General  told  the  witness  that  "  the 
Armenians  were  allowed  to  make  arrangements  for 
Carriages."  "  But  nobody,"  says  the  witness, 
"  seemed  to  be  making  any  arrangements.  I  know 
of  one  wealthy  merchant,  however,  who  paid.  £15 
(Turkish)  for  a  carriage  to  take  himself  and  his 
wife  .  .  .  But  about  ten  minutes  drive  From 
the  start,  they  were  commanded  by  the  gendarmes 
to  leave  the  carriage,  which  was  sent  back  to  the 
city."  And  it  was  always  the  same  tale  •  for  the 
owners  of  the  vehicles  were  always  local  Moslems, 
who  had  no  intention  of  accompanying  the  gruesome 
caravan  to  its  distant  destination.     After  one  day's 


37 

march,  or  two,  when  the  victim's  last  pence  had 
been  extorted  in  bribes,  the  drivers  turned  their 
oxen  about.  Often  the  second  batch  of  a  convoy, 
as  it  started,  saw  the  carts  assigned  to  the  first  batch 
returning  empty  to  the  town,  and  realised  that  they 
would  have  to  travel  the  greater  part  of  their 
immense  journey  over  the  mountains  on  foot.* 

From  the  impression  it  made  on  the  witnesses, 
the  scene  of  departure  must  in  any  case  have  been 
harrowing  enough.  From  that  town  on  the  coast 
the  exiles  were  despatched  in  successive  batches  of 
about  2,000  each. 

"The  weeping  and  wailing  of  the  women  and 
children  was  most  heartrending.  Some  of  these 
people  were  from  wealthy  and  refined  circles,  some 
were  accustomed  to  luxury  and  ease.  There  were 
clergymen,  merchants,  bankers,  lawyers,  mechanics 

*  For  example,  the  following  incident  is  related  in  a 
letter,  printed  by  the  New  York  paper  "  Gotchnag  "  on 
September  4th,  to  which  reference  has  been  made 
already  : — 

"  When  the  Government  announced  that  the 
Armenian  population  must  remove  from  a  certain 
inland  town  in  Eastern  Anatolia,  an  American 
missionary,  Miss  X.,  obtained  permission  to  ac- 
company the  deported  people.  She  bought  a  car- 
riage, eight  carts  and  six  donkeys,  for  the  use  of 
the  pupils  and  teachers  of  the  missionary  school  on 
their  journey.  The  Government  had  placed  an 
ox-cart  at  the  disposal  of  each  family,  bat  no  one 
knows  exactly  how  far  the  unfortunate  deported 
families  have  been  able  to  ride,  or  at  what  moment 
they  have  been  compelled  to  go  on  foot." 


38 

tailors,  and  men  from  every  walk  of  life 

The  whole  Mohammedan  population  knew  that  these 
people  were  to  be  their  prey  from  the  beginning,  and 
<h..y  v, .  animals."     (A.C.R.) 

And  nor,'  is  another  description  from  a  different 

place  : 

•'Ail  [he  morning  the  ox-carts  creaked  out  of  the 

town,  laden  with  women  and  children,  and  here  and 
there  a  man  who  had  escaped  the  previous  deporta- 
tions. The  women  and  girls  all  wore  the  Turkish 
costume,  that  their  faces  might  not  bo  exposed  to  the 
gaze  <:(  drivers  and  gendarmes— a  brutal  lot  of  men 
brought  in  from  other  regions 

The  panic  in  the  city  was  terrible.  The  people 
full  that  the  Government  was  determined  to  exter- 
minate the  Armenian  race,  and  they  were  powerless 
to  resist.  The  people  were  sin'.'  that  the  men  were 
being  killed  and  the  women  kidnapped.  Many  of 
the  convicts  in  the  prisons  had  been  released, 
and  the  mountains  around  were  foil  of  bands  of 
outlaws 

Most  of  the  Armenians  iu  the  district  were  abso- 
lutely hopeless.  Many  said  it  was  worse  than  a 
massacre.  No  one  knew  what  was  coming,  but  all 
i'eli-  that  it  was  the  end.  Even  the  pastors  and  leaders 
couW  offer  no  word  of  encouragement  or  hope.  Many 
began  to  doubi  even  the  existence  of  God.0  Under 
the  -train  many  individuals  became  demented, 

some  of  them  permanently."'     (A.C.R.) 

*  .V  repetition  of  a  case  which  is  reported  from  the 
massacres  of  1909,  when  a  woman  who  had  seen  her  child 
burnt  alive  in  the  village  church,  answered  her  would-be 
comforters:  "  Don't  you  see  what  ha^  happened?  God 
has  grone  mad." 


39 


III.  THE  ROAD  TO  DEATH. 

In  this  agonising  state  of  apprehension  the  bands 
of  Armenian  women  were  driven  forth  on  their 
road.  There  was  a  heroism  about  their  exodus, 
for  there  was  still  a  loophole  of  eseape,  the  same 
alternative  of  apostasy  that  had  tempted  their 
husbands  and  fathers.  And  in  their  case,  at  least, 
apostasy  brought  the  certainty  of  life,  because  the 
condition  laid  down  was  their  immediate  entrance 
into  the  harem  of  a  Turk.  Life  at  the  price  of 
honour — most  of  them  seem  to  have  rejected  it  : 
and  yet,  if  they  had  known  all  that  lay  before 
them,  they  might  have  judged  it  the  better  part. 
As  it  was,  they  clutched  at  the  desperate  chance  of 
immunity,  and  presented  themselves  for  the  march 
- — playing  too  unsuspectingly  into  their  conductors' 
hands.  For  the  gaol-bred  gendarmes  had  no 
;tion  of  conducting  the  caravan -intact  to  its 
destination. 

Some  were  sold  into  shame  before  the  march 
began.  "  One  Moslem  reported  that  a  gendarme 
had  offered  to  sell  him  two  girls  for  a  medjidieh 
(about  three  shillings  and  twopence)".  They  sold 
the  youngest  and  most  handsome  at  every  village 


40 

where  they  passed  the  night  ;  and  these  girls  have 
been  trafficked  in  hundreds  through  the  brothels 
of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  Abundant  news  has 
come  from  Constantinople  itself  of  their  being 
sold  for  a  few  shillings  in  the  open  markets  of 
the  capital  ;  and  one  piece  of  evidence  in  Lord 
Bryce's  possession  comes  from  a  girl  no  more 
than  ten  years  old,  who  was  carried  with  this 
object  from  a  town  of  North  Eastern  Anatolia  to 
the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus.  These  were  Christian 
women,  as  civilised  and  refined  as  the  women  of 
Western  Europe,  and  they  were  enslaved  into 
degradation.  Yet  they  were  more  fortunate  than 
their  companions  who  were  denied  even  this  release 
from  their  terrible  journey  ;  and  these  \vere  old 
women,  mothers  of  families,  mothers  actually  with 
child,  who  were  herded  on  to  meet  the  intolerable 
hardships  which  their  journey  held  in  store. 

"  Women  with  little  children  in  their  arms,  or  in 
the  last  days  of  pregnancy,  were  driven  along  under 
the  whip  like  cattle.  Three  different  cases  came 
under  my  knowledge  where  the  woman  was  de- 
livered on  the  road,  and  because  her  brutal  driver 
hurried  her  along  she  died  of  hemorrhage.  Some 
women  became  so  completely  worn  out  and  helpless 
that  they  left  their  infants  beside  the  road."  (A.C.R.) 

This  latter  fact  is  witnessed  from  several 
quarters.  One  piece  of  evidence  tells  of  a  woman 
throwing    her    dying    child    down    a    well,    that 


she  might  be  spared  the  sight  of  its  )ast  agony.* 
Another  woman,  stifle  I  in  a  crowded  rattle-truck 
on  the  Anatolian  Railway,  threw  her  baby  onto  the 

line. 

"  Six  agonised  mothers,  passing  through  Konieb 
by  this  railway  to  an  unknown  destination, entrusted 
their  little  children  to  the  Armenian  families  in 
the  city  iu  order  to  save  them  alive;  but  the  local 
authorities  tore  them  away  from  the  Armenians  and 
placed  them  in  Moslem  hands." 

This  last  incident  comes  from  the  confidential 
letter  to  a  high  Armenian  ecclesiastic  which  has 
been  mentioned  above  ;  and  testimony  from  the 
American  Committee's  Report  only  heightens  the 
horror. 

"An   Armenian  told  me  thai  he  had   abandoned 

two  children  on  the  way  because  they  could  nor 
walk,  and  that  he  did  not  know  whether  they  had 
died  of  cold  and  hunger,  whether  a  charitable  soul 
had  taken  care  of  them,  or  whether  they  had  become 
the  prey  of  wild  beasts.  Many  children  seem  to 
have  been  thus  abandoned.  One  seems  to  have  been 
thrown  into  a  well." 


The  same  incident  is  recorded  by  a  first-hand  witness 
who  had  come  to  Constantinople  from  the  interior,  and 
whose  general  description  of  the  deportations  (which  tallies 
exactly  with  the  personal  narratives  given  here)  has  been 
resumed  by  Prof.  Hagopian  in  an  article  published  on 
September  1st.  101."),  by  the  paper  "Armenia"  of 
Marseilles.  . 


42 

This  confirms  the  entirely  independent  testi- 
mony to  the  same  incident  from  another  source, 
and  there  is  evidence  of  equal  weight  for  many 
other  incidents  of  equal  horror. 

"  I  saw  a  girl  three  and  a  half  years  old,  wearing 
only  a  shirt  in  rags.  She  had  come  on  foot  .  .  . 
She  was  terribly  spare,  and  was  shivering  from  cold, 
as  were  also  all  the  innumerable  children  I  saw  on 
that  day."  (A.C.R.) 
Here  is  a  witness  who  saw  one  of  these 
caravans  on  its  road. 

"  They  went  slowly,  most  of  them  fainting  from 
want  of  food.  We  saw  a  father  walking  with  a  one- 
day-old  baby  in  his  arms,  and  behind  him  the 
mother  walking  as  well  as  possible,  pushed  by  the 
stick  of  the  Turkish  guard.  It  was  not  uncommon 
to  see  a  woman  fall  down  and  then  rise  again  under 
the  stick."     (A.C.R.) 

"A    young    woman,    whose    husband    had    been 
imprisoned,  was  carried  away  with  her  fifteen-days- 
old   baby,   with   one    donkey   for    all   her   luggage. 
Aft  r  one  day  and  a  half  of  travel,  a  soldier  stole  her 
donkey,  and  she  had  to  go  on  foot,  her  baby  in  her 
arms."     (A.C.R.) 
But   the   robbery   of   their  goods  was   not  the 
worst.     These   poor,   worn-out,   perishing  women 
were  robbed  obscenely  of  their   honour,   for   any 
who  had  not  brought  a  few  shillings  into  the  gen- 
darmes'  pockets  by  being  sold  to   richer  Moslems 
were    abandoned   to   the    gendarmes'    own    more 
brutal  lust. 


43 

"  At  one  place  the  commander  of  gendarmerie 
openly  told  the  men  to  whom  he  consigned  a  large 
company,  that  they  were  at  liberty  to  do  what  they 
chosa  with  the  women  and  girls."     (xl.C.R.) 

"The  Armenians  deported  from  a  certain  town," 
says  another  witness  who  saw  them  puss,  "could  not 
be  recognised  as  a  result  of  their  twelve  days' 
march     .  .     .     Even    in    this    deplorable    state, 

rapes  and  violent  acts  are  every  day  occurrences." 
(A.C.R.) 

Age  was  the  only  ground  of  exemption  from 
outrage,  and  there  were  women  of  extreme  age  in 
these  caravans  ;  for  neither  age  nor  sickness  gave 
exemption  from  slow  murder  by  deportation. 

"  A  case  worthy  of  notice  was  that  of  F.'s  sister. 
Her  husband  had  worked  in  our  hospiUl  as  a  soldier- 
nurse  for  many  months.  She  contracted  typhus 
and  was  brought  to  our  hospital  .  .  .  .  A  few 
days  before  the  deportation,  the  husband  was  im- 
prisoned and  exiled  without  examination  or  fault. 
When  the  quarter  in  which  they  lived  went,  the 
mother  got  out  of  bed  in  the  hospital,  and  was  put 
on  an  ox-cart  to  go  with  her  children."     (A.C.R.) 

Indeed,  the  sick  and  aged  could  be  trusted  to  die  on 

the  road  of  their  own  accord. 

"  The  women  believed  that  they  were  going  to 
worse  than  death,  and  many  carried  poison  in  their 
pockets  to  use  if  necessary.  Some  carried  picks  and 
shovels  to  bur y  those  they  knew  would  die  by  the 
wayside."     (A.C.R.)* 

*  The  same  incident  is  reported  in  a  document  trans- 
mitted to  Lord  Bryce.  The  names  of  all  the  parties 
concerned  are  given  with  exactitude  in  both  acoounts. 


44 

Sometimes  their  misery  was  ended  unexpectedly 
soon,  when  their  tormentors  gave?  way  prematurely 
to  their  Inst  for  blood.  At  one  small  village  the 
whole  tragedy  was  enacted  in  one  scene. 

'*  Forty-five  men  and  women  were  taken  a  short 
distance  from  the  village  into  the  valley.  The 
women  were  first  outraged  by  the  officers  of  the 
gendarmerie,  and  then  turned  over  to  the  gendarmes 
to  dispose  of.  According  to  this  witness,  a  child  was 
killed  by  having  its  brains  beaten  out  on  a  rock. 
The  men  were  all  killed,  and  not  a  single  person 
survived  out  of  this  group  of  forty-five."     (A.C.R.) 

1,1  The  forced  exodus  of  the  last  part  of  the 
Armenian  population  from  a  certain  district  took 
place  on  June  1st,  1915.  All  the  villages,  as  well 
as  three-quarters  of  the  town,  had  already  been 
evacuated.  An  escort  of  fifteen  gendarmes  followed 
the  third  convoy,  which  included  4,000  to  5,000 
persons.  The  prefect  of  the  city  had  wished  them 
a  pleasant  journey.  Bat  at  a  few  hours'  distance 
from  the  town,  the  caravan  was  surrounded  by 
bunds  of  a  brigand-tribe,  and  by  a  mob  of  Turkish 
peasants  armed  with  guns,  axes  and  clubs.  They 
3rst  began  plundering  their  victims,  searching  care, 
fully  even  (be  very  young  children.  The  gendarmes 
sold  to  tin-  Turkish  peasants  what  they  could  not 
carry  away  with  them.  After  they  had  taken  even 
the  food  of  these  unhappy  people,  the  massacre  of 
the  males  began,  including  two  priests,  one  of  whom 
was  ninety.  In  six  or  seven  days  all  males  above 
fifteen  years  of  age  had  been  murdered.  It  was  the 
beginning  of  the  end.      People  on  hor^e-back  raised 


45 

the  veils  of  the  women,   and  curried  off  the  pretty 
ones."     (A.C.R.) 

And  here  is  the  same  story  at  first  hand  (A.C.U.), 
from  a  lady  who  actually  experienced  the  horrors 
of  this  murderous  march. 

She  tells  how  the  crime  began  with  the  hanging 
of  the  Bishop  and  seven  other  notables,  and  the 
wholesale  slaughter  in  a  wood  of  about  eighty  men, 
after  they  had  been  imprisoned  and  flogged  in 
prison.  "  The  rest  of  the  population  was  sent  off 
in  three  batches  ;  I  was  among  the  third  batch. 
My  husband  died  eight  years  ago,  leaving  me  and 
my  mother  and  my  eight-year-old  daughter  exten 
sive  possessions,  so  that  we  were  living  in  comfort 
Since  mobilisation,  an  Ottoman  commandant  has 
been  living  in  my  house  free  of  rent.  He  told  me 
not  to  go,  but  I  felt  I  must  share  the  fate  of  my 
people.  I  took  three  horses  with  me,  loaded  with 
provisions.  My  daughter  had  some  five-lira  pieces 
round  her  neck,  and  I  carried  some  twenty  liras 
an  I  four  diamond  ring]  on  my  parson.  All 
else  that  we  had  was  left  behind.  Our  party  left 
on  June  1st  (old  style),  fifteen  gendarmes  going 
with  us." 

Then  she  describes,  detail  for  detail,  the  surprise 
attack  on  the  road,  the  killing  of  the  two  priests 
and  of  every  male  over  fifteen  years  of  age.  Their 
horses,  their  valuables,  their  food — all  were  taken. 
"  Very  many  women  and  girls  were  carried  off  to 
the  mountains,  among  them  my  sister,  whose  one- 
year-old  baby  they  threw  away.  A  Turk  picked  it 
up  and  carried  it  off,  1  know  not  where.     My  mother 


46 

walked  till  she  could  walk  no  further,  and  dropped 
by  the  roadside,  on  a  mountain  top.  We  found  on 
the  road  many  who  had  been  in  the  previous 
batches  ;  some  women  were  among  the  killed,  with 
their  husbands  and  sons.  "We  also  come  across  some 
old  people  and  their  infants,  still  alive  but  in  a 
pitiful  condition,  having  shouted  their  voices  away." 
And  here  again  the  former  witness  exactly 
corroborates  the  narrative. 

"  On  the  way,"  says  this    other    testimony,   "  we 

constantly    met    murdered     men    and    youths,    all 

covered  with  blood.     There  were  also  women  and 

girls  killed  near  their  husbands   or   sons.      On   the 

heights  of  the  mountains  and  in  the  depths  of  the 

valleys  numbers  of  old  men  and  babies  were  lying 

on  the  ground." 

They    were    on    the    track    of    the    preceding 

convoys   and  the  same  picture  of  death  is  given 

by  witnesses  who    followed  the  route   of  another 

caravan  a  short  way  from  its  starting  point. 

"  Many  persons  were  obliged  to  start  off  on  foot 
without  funds  and  with  what  they  could  gather  up 
from  their  homes  and  carry  on  their  backs.  Such 
persons  naturally  soon  became  so  weak  that  they 
fell  behind  and  were  bayoneted  and  thrown  into  the 
river,  and  their  bodies  floated  down  to  the  sea,  or 
lodged  in  the  shallow  river  on  rocks,  where  they 
remained  for  ten  or  twelve  days  and  putrefied.'-' 

Yer  those  were  fortunate  who  found  even  such 
a  death,  tor  they  escaped  the  increasing  torments 
which  the  survivors  had  to  suffer. 


47 

"We  were  not  allowed  to  sleep  at  night  in  the 
villages,"  says  the  Armenian  lady,  "bul  lay  down 
outside.      Under  cover  of   the   night    i  bable 

deeds  were  committed  by  the  gendarmes,  brigands 
and  villagers.  Many  of  us  died  from  hnnger  and 
strokes  of  apoplexy.  Others  were  lefl  by  the  road- 
side, too  feeble  to  go  on."  The  parallel  account 
confirms  her  once  more  in  almost  identical  won  Is, 
and  adds  that  "the  peoplo  found  themselves  in  the 
necessity  of  eating  grass." 
Yet  even  so,  many  failed  to  succumb,  and  the 

warders  had  to  thin  the  ranks  by  still  more  drastic 

means. 

"The  worst  and  most  unimaginable  horrors," 
the  lady  continues,  "were  reserved  for  us  at  the 
banks  of  the  (Western)  Euphrates  (Kara  Su)  and 
the  Brzindjan  plain.  The  mutilated  bodies  of  women, 
girls  audi  lir.lt>  children  made  everybody  shudder. 
The  brigands  were  doing  all  sort.-  of  awful  deeds  to 
the  women  and  girls  that  were  with  us,  whose  cries 
went  up  to  heaven.  At  the  Euphrates,  the  I 
and  gendarmes  threw  into  the  river  all  the  v<  m  lining 
children  under  fifteen  years  old.  Those  who  could 
swim  were  shot  down  as  they  struggled  in  the  water." 

But  the  narrator  was  condemned  to  outlive  this 
spectacle  "  On  the  next  stage  of  the  journey,  the 
fields  and  hill-sides  were  dotted  with  swollen  and 
blackened  corpses,  which  filled  and  fouled  th 
with  their  stench."  It  was  not  till  the  thirty- 
second  day  of  their  march  that  they  reached  a 
temporary  halting  place,  where  the  narrative  comes 
to  an  end. 


48 

What  has  been  this  woman's  subsequent  fate  we 
do  not  know,  for  the  halting  place  was  less  than 
half  way  to  her  final  destination,  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  conceive  the  suffering  already  crowded 
into  that  first  month".  The  mere  physical  cruelty 
of  it  is  appalling — a  delicate  lady  driven  thirty- 
two  clays'  journey  on  foot  through  some  of  the 
roughest  mountain-country  in  the  world.  The 
spiritual  torment  could  perhaps  only  be  fathomed 
by  actual  experience.  And  this  is  only  one  nar- 
rative out  of  scores,  chosen  here  because  it  is 
delivered  with  exactitude  by  the  mouth  of  two 
witnesses,  not  because  it  is  in  any  way  unique. 
On  the  contrary,  the  same  horrors  were  being 
enacted  in  hundreds  of  Anatolian  towns  and  villages 
and  over  thousands  of  miles  of  savage  mountain 
trails,  enacted  and  repeated  from  the  month  of 
April  till  the  present  moment.  And  the  narra- 
tives are  not  open  to  doubt.  Those  gathered 
together  in  the  American  Committee's  Report 
were  all  recorded  and  endorsed  by  authoritative 
auditors.  And  they  are  not  vague  denunciations, 
or  highly  coloured  generalisations.  There  are,  of 
course,  many  general  accounts  of  these  atrocities 
in  addition  to  these  individual  testimonies  ;  but 
they,  too,  are  remarkably  free  from  vagueness  and 
exaggeration,  and  when  they  are  compared  with 
the  first-hand  evidence,  they  show  agreement  with 
it  even  in  minute  details. 


49 

For  instance  there  ia  Professor  Hagopian's  resume 
(published  in  the  "  Armenia"  of  Marseilles  on 
September  1st.  1915)  of.  the  genera]  impressions 
gathered  by  a  witness  who  had  recently  come  from 
the  interior  of  Anatolia  to  Constantinople.  He 
describes,  soberly  and  exactly,  the  gangs  of 
prisoners  being  driven  across  the  mountains,  the 
blows  of  the  gendarmes,  the  children  born  on  the 
road,  the  mothers  and  old  men  dying  of  ex- 
haustion, even  the  incident  of  the  woman  throwing 
her  baby  into  the  well  (see  p.  41  above). 

The  somewhat  longer  description,  given  in  i}io, 
letter  to  a  high  Armenian  ecclesiastic  in  neutral 
territory,  is  so  remarkable  in  its  agreement  that 
certain  passages  deserve  to  be  quoted  in  illustration. 

"In  four  provinces,"  says  this  letter,  "the  local 
authorities  gave  facilities  to  those  condemned  to 
deportation — five  or  ten  days'  grace,  permission  to 
execute  a  partial  sale  of  their  property,  and  the 
privilege  of  hiring  a  cart  between  several  families ; 
but,  at  the  end  of  several  days,  the  carters  left 
them  on  the  road  and  returned  to  i^wn.  The 
caravans  tints  formed  used  to  meet  on  the  morrow, 
or  sometimes  several  days  aftei'  their  start,  with 
lands  of  brigands,  or  chc  with  Moslem  peasants, 
who  plundered  them  of  everything.  The  hands 
fraternised  with  the  gendarmes,  and  killed  the  few 
men  or  boys  included  in  theearavans.  They  carried 
off'  tli >   women,  girls  and  children,  leaving  only  the 


50 

old  women,  who  were  driven  along  by  the  gendarmes 
with  blows  of  the  whip  and  died  of  hunger  on  the 
roacl.  A.  first-hand  witness  tells  us  how  the  women 
deported  from  a  certain  province  were  left,  after 
several  days,  in  the  plain  of  Kharpont,  where  they 
all  died  of  starvation  (fifty  or  sixty  a  day)  :  and  the 
authorities  have  merely  sent  a  few  people  to  bury 
them,  so  as  not  to  endanger  the  health  of  the  Moslem 
population     . 

"  The  caravans  of  women  and  children  are  exposed 
in  front  of  the  Government  buildings  in  every  town 
or  village  where  they  pass,  in  order  that  the  Moslems 
may  take  their  choice. 

"  The  caravan  despatched  from  [the  actual  town 
from  which  the  lady  was  deported  whose  narrative 
we  have  quoted  above]  was  thinned  out  in  this 
fashion,  and  the  ivomcn  and  children  who  remained 
over  were  thrown  into  the  Euphrates  at  the  jjlace 
called  Kemakh-Boghazi,  just  outside  Erzindjan." 

This  passage  is  particularly  important,  because 
it  relates  events  for  which  we  already  have  the 
evidence  of  two  quite  independent,  first-hand 
witnesses.  Anyone  who  compares  the  italicised 
sentences  with  the  extracts  quoted  from  the 
Armenian  lady  and  her  fellow-victim  immediately 
above,  will  see  that  the  general  report — the  story 
as  it  circulated  through  the  interior  of  Anatolia 
and  travelled  to  Constantinople  and  Marseilles — is 
very  far  from  being  exaggerated.     It  is  less  grue- 


51 

some,  less  extreme,  in  its  details,  than  the  original 
testimony  itself  ;  and  this  evident  sobriety  of  the 
general  rumour,  in  a  case  where  we  can  put  it  to 
the  test,  must  obviously  strengthen  our  belief  in 
cases  where  the  facts  alleged  are  supported  by 
secondary  evidence  alone. 

This  secondary  evidence,  however,  is  really 
superfluous.  The  first-hand  testimonies  arc  abun- 
dant enough,  and  convincing  enough,  to  afford  in 
themselves  a  thorough  exposition  of  the  crime. 
They  are  concrete  statements,  fortified  throughout 
by  the  names  of  well-known  individuals  who  have 
either  witnessed  these  atrocities  or  been  their 
victims.  For  reasons  of  common  prudence  these 
names  have  to  be  withheld  ;  but  anyone  who 
glances  at  the  American  Committee's  Report  will 
see  by  the  number  of  blanks,  where  names  should 
be,  how  direct  and  personal  this  evidence  is. 

Moreover,  the  testimony  comes  from  many 
independent  quarters.  From  the  town  where  the 
Armenian  lady's  journey  was  broken,  we  have  the 
narrative  of  a  foreign  resident,  the  citizen  of  a 
neutral  state.  It  is  a  town  on  the  Eastern 
Euphrates  (Murad  Su),  a  meeting-place  of  routes 
from  north  to  south,  and  very  many  convoys  of 
exiles  passed  this  way. 

"If,"  the  resident  writes,  "it  were  simply  a  matter 
of  beinsr  obliged  to  leave  here  to  go  somewhere  else. 


52 

it  would  not  be  so  bad.  but  everybody  knows  it  is 
a  case  of  going  to  one's  death.  If  them  wis 
any  doubt  about  it,  it  has  been  removed  by  the 
arrival  of  a  number  of  parties,  aggregating  several 
thousand  people,  from  Erzeroum  and  Erzindjan. 
I  have  visited  their  encampment  a  number  of 
times  and  talked  with  some  of  the  people.  They 
are,  almost  without  exception,  ragged,  filthy,  hungry 
and  ill.  That  is  not  surprising,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  they  have  been  on  the  road  for  nearly 
two  months,  with  no  change  of  clothing,  no  chance 
to  wash,  no  shelter,  and  little  to  eat.  The  Government 
has  been  giving  them  some  scanty  rations  hero.  I 
■watched  them  one  time  when  their  food  was  brought. 
Wild  animals  could  not  be  worse.  They  rushed  upon 
the  guards  who  carried  the  food  and  the  guards  beat 
them  back  with  clubs,  hitting  hard  enough  ro  kill 
them  sometimes.  To  watch  them  one  could  hardly 
believe  that  thes^  people  were  human  beings. 

"  As  one  walks  through  the  camp,  mothers  offer 
their  children  and  beg  one  to  take  them.  In  fact,  the 
Turks  have  been  taking  their  choice  of  these  children 
and  girls  for  slaves,  or  worse.  In  fact,  they  have  even 
had  their  doctors  there  to  examine  the  more  likely 
girls  and  thus  secure  the  best  ones. 

"  There  are  very  few  men  among  them,  as  most  of 
them  have  been  killed  on  the  road.  All  tell  the  same 
story  of  having  been  attacked  and  robbed  by  the 
Kurds.  Most  of  them  were  attacked  over  and  over 
again,  and  a  great  many  of  them,  especially  the  men, 
were  killed.  Women  and  children  Were  also  killed. 
Many  died,  of  course,  from  sickness  and  exhaustion 


53 

on  tho  way,  and  there  have  been  deaths  each  day  that 
they  have  been  here.  Several  different  parties  have 
arrived  and,  after  remaining  a  day  or  two,  have  been 
pushed  on  with  no  apparent  destination.  Those  who 
have  reached  here  are  only  a  small  portion,  however, 
of  thoso  who  started.  By  continuing  to  drive  these 
people  on  in  this  way  it  will  be  possible  to  dispose  of 
all  of  them  in  a  comparatively  short  time. 

"Among  those  with  whom  I  have  talked  were  three 

sisters.     They  had  been  educated  at and  spoke 

excellent  English.     They  said  their  family  was  the 

richest  in and  numbered  twenty-five  when  they 

left,  but  there  were  now  only  fourteen  survivors. 
The  other  eleven,  including  the  husband  of  one  of 
them  and  their  old  grandmother,  had  been  butchered 
before  their  eyes  by  the  Kurds.  The  oldest  male 
survivor  of  the  family  was  eight  years  of  age.     When 

they  left  ,  they  had  money,  horse3  and  personal 

effects,  but  they  had  been  robbed  of  everything, 
including  even  their  clothing.  They  said  some  of 
them  had  been  left  absolutely  naked,  and  others  with 
only  a  single  garment,  and  when  they  reached  a 
village  their  gendarmes  obtained  clothes  for  them 
from  some  of  the  native  women. 

"  Another  girl  with  whom  I  talked  is  the  daughter 

of  the   Protestant   pastor  of  -.     She   said   every 

member  of  her  family  with  her  had  been  killed,  and 
she  was  left  entirely  alone.  These  and  some  others 
are  a  few  survivors  of  the  better  class  of  people  who 
have  been  exiled.  They  are  being  detained  in  an 
abandoned  school-house  just  outside  of  the  town  and 
no  one  is  allowed  to  enter  it.     They  said  they  prac- 


54 

tically  were  in  prison,  although  they  were  allowed  to 
go  to  a  spring  just  outside  the  building.  It  was  there 
I  happened  to  see  them.  All  the  others  are  camped 
in  a  large  open  field  with  no  protection  at  all  from 
the  sun. 

"The  condition  of:  these  people  indicate-;  the  fate 
of  those  who  have  left  and  are  about  to  leave  from 
here.  I  believe  nothing  has  been  heard  from  any  of 
them  as  yet,  and  probably  very  little  will  be  heard. 
The  system  that  is  being  fallowed  seems  to  be  to  have 
bands  of  Kurds  awaiting  them  on  the  road  to  kill  the 
men  especially  and  incidentally  some  of  the  others. 
The  entire  movement  seems  to  be  the  most  thoroughly 
organized  and  effective  massacre  this  country  has 
ever  seen." 

This  is  the  verdict  of  an  eye-witness  who  saw  the 
Ottoman  Government's  scheme  in  fall  progress. 
He  was  witnessing  in  the  twentieth  century  after 
Christ  the  same  horrors  that  had  been  perpetrated 
in  these  regions  six  and  eiffht  centuries  before  the 
Christian  era.  When  we  read  that  the  Assyrian 
or  Babylonian  Government  "  carried  into  captivity  " 
such  and  such  a  broken  people  or  tribe,  we  hardly 
seize  the  meaning  of  the  statement.  Even  when 
we  see  the  process  portrayed  with  grim  realism  on 
the  concpterors  bas-reliefs,  it  does  not  penetrate 
our  imagination  to  the  quick.  But  now  we  know. 
It  has  happened  in  our  world,  and  the  Assyrian's 
crime  was  not  so  fiendish  as  the  Turk's.  "Or- 
ganised and    effective  ■  ■.  "  -that   is    what 


a.:> 


inch  a  doportati  m  means,  and  that  must  always 
iave  been  its  implication.  But  the  Assyrian  at 
.ny  rale  gave  the  remnant  a  chance  of  life  at  the 
end  of  their  journey.  They  received  houses  and 
lands,  and  often  brought  a  new  community  to 
birth  in  exile.  The  Turk  was  more  consistent  in 
his  cruelty.  These  people  were  to  be  deported  to 
their  death,  and  nothing  should  reprieve  them. 
"  I  believe  nothing  has  been  heard  from  those  who 
have  left  from  here,  and  probably  very  little  will 
be  heard,"  says  the  witness.  Unfortunately,  he 
was  in  error.  Certainly  most  of  those  who  had 
been  driven  over  the  mountains  from  the  far  north 
must  have  perished,  as  he  surmised,  on  their 
terrible  journey.  But  there  were  others  from 
Cilicia  and  Northern  Syria  who  had  a  shorter  road 
to  travel,  and  these  did  not  succeed  in  dying  by 
the  way.  They  were  reserved  for  the  last  and 
most  hideous  scene  in  the  drama. 


56 

ikkRJiAttl 

P.  O.  BOX  707 
UNIVERSITY.  CALIFORNIA 

IV.  THE  JOURNEY'S  END. 

The  Young  Turks'  final  denouement  was  not 
quite  a  novelty.  They  had  rehearsed  it  in  minia- 
ture some  years  before,  when  the  "  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress"  had  supplanted  the  Hamidian 
regime  at  Constantinople,  and  set  itself  to  eliminate 
the  abuses  of  the  city.  The  worst  eyesore  was  the 
army  of  masterless  dogs,  which  had  been  permitted 
by  too  tolerant  generations  to  establish  itself  in  the 
streets,  and  exercise  those  functions  of  scavenger 
for  which  an  easy-going  municipal  administration 
had  failed  to  provide  by  human  agency.  The 
Young  Turks  dealt  promptly  and  effectively  with 
these  undesirable  denizens  of  their  capital.  They 
collected  them  on  boats  and  marooned  them  on 
a  desert  island  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  where  the 
animals  solved  the  problem  of  their  future  by 
perishing  of  starvation.  When  Enver  and  his 
friends  were  thinking  out  the  problem  of  the 
Armenians  last  Spring,  they  did  not  forget  this 
successful  precedent. 

The  Armenians,  in  fact,  (or  such  of  them  as 
survived  the  process  of  deportation),  were  to  be 
provided  for  in  the  same  fashion  as  the  Stambouli 


0/ 


dogs,  ami  two  places  were  selected  by  the  Govern- 
ment for  their  ultimate  disposal.  One  o£  these  was 
Snltanieh,  a  tillage --  of  the  Konia  district  in  the 
centre  of  Anatolia,  and  the  choice  was  scientifically 

made  :  for  Anatolia  is  a  tabled  and,  with  a  well- 
wooded,    well-watered     periphery    of    mountain- 

country  towards  the  sea,  where  the  towns  are 
situated  with  their  Armenian  inhabitants,  and  a 
cruel  desert  in  its  inland  heart,  where  even  the 
Turkman  nomad  can  barely  maintain  his  existence. 
At  Sultanieh,  a  thousand  families  of  Armenian 
townspeople,  assembled  by  weary  marches  from 
every  quarter,  were  given  a  taste  of  the  wilder] 
— a  thousand  families,  and  onty  fifty  grown  men 
among  them,*  to  provide  for  the  needs  of  this 
helpless  flock  of  women,  children  and  invalids 
flung  thus  suddenly  upon  their  own  resources,  in 
an  environment  as  abnormal  to  them  as  it  would 
be  to  the  middle-class  population  of  any  town  in 
England  or  France.  Having  established  this 
"agricultural  colony"  on  the  waste,  the  Grovern- 


*  This  is  vouched  for  by  throe  independent  testimonies 
— a  witness  in  the  A.C.R. :  the  letter  written  (as  in; 
evidence  shows)  by  an  Armenian  Protestant  to  a  citizen 
of  the  U.S.,  which  was  published  in  the  Armenian  paper 
'*  (/otcJtiiftr/"  oil  September  4th,  1015  ;  and  a  letter  from 
Constantinople,  dated  June  15th,  11*15,  which  will  be 
quoted  at  greater  length  below. 


58 

ment   was  content,   and  troubled   itself  about  its 
colonists  no  more. 

But  Sultanieh  was  by  no  means  the  worst  of 
the  charnel-houses  to  which  the  remnant  of  the 
Armenian  race  was  consigned.  The  greater 
number  were  sent  on  a  longer  journey  to  the 
south-east,  and  were  concentrated  at  Aleppo,  the 
capital  of  Northern  Syria,  for  dispersal  among  the 
Arabian  provinces  beyond. 

Between  Anatolia  and  Arabia,  the  north- 
western half  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  and  its 
south-eastern  adjunct,  there  is  a  violent  climatic 
contrast.  The  Anatolian  highlands  are  physiologi- 
cally akin  to  Europe,  and  the  Armenians  who 
dwell  in  them  are  not  only  Europeans  in  their 
civilisation  but  are  accustomed  to  an  essentially 
European  climate — the  same  climate  that  prevails 
in  the  Balkan  Peninsula  or  Austria-Hungary. 
But  when  you  descend  the  last  tier  of  these 
highlands,  or  follow  the  Euphrates  down  its  gorges 
from  the  Armenian  mountains  into  the  Mesopo- 
tamian  plains,  you  pass  abruptly  out  of  Europe 
into  country  of  a  semi-tropical  character.  You 
find  yourself  in  Northern  Arabia,  a  vast  amphi- 
theatre sloping  gradually  south-eastwards  towards 
the  Persian  Gulf,  and  merging  into  some  of  the 
most  sultry  regions  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
This   amphitheatre   has    witnessed    many    ghastly 


59 

dramas  in  its  day,  but  none,  perhaps,  more  ghastly 
than  the  tragedy  that  is  being  enacted  in  it  now, 
when  its  torrid  climate  is  bein^  inflicted  as  a 
sentence  of  death  upon  the  Armenians  deported 
thither  from  their  temperate  homes  in  the  north. 

Here  is  the  narrative  of  a  resident  at  Aleppo  who 
saw  them  being  herded  through  that  city  to  their 
doom. 

The  hideous  rumour  of  their  pilgrimage  had 
preceded  their  arrival,  and  "  at  first,"  he  says,  "  these 
stories  were  not  given  much  credence  ;  but  as  many 
of  the  refugees  are  now  arriving  in  Aleppo,  no  doubt 
any  longer  remains  of  the  truth  of  the  matter.  On 
August  2nd,  about  eight  hundred  middle-aged  and 
old  women,  accompanied  by  childi"en  under  the  age 
of  ten  years,  arrived  afoot  from  Diyarbekir,  after 
forty-five  days  en  route,  and  in  the  most  pitiable 
condition  imaginable.  They  report  the  taking  of  all 
the  young  women  and  girls  by  the  Kurds,  the 
pillaging  even  of  the  last  bit  of  money  and  other 
belongings,  of  starvation,  of  privation,  and  hardship 
of  every  description.  Their  deplorable  condition 
bears  out  their  statements  in  every  detail. 

"  I  am  informed  that  4,500  persons  were  sent 
from  Sughurt  to  Ras-el-Ain,  over  2,000  from 
Mezereh  to  Diyarbekir,  and  that  all  the  cities  of 
Bitlis,  Mardin,  Mosul,  Severek,  Malatia,  Besneh, 
&c,  have  been  depopulated  of  Armenians,  the  men 
and  boys  and  many  of  the  women  killed,  and  the 
balance  scattered  throughout  the  country.  If  this 
is  true,  of  which  there  is  little  doubt,  even  the 
3 


60 

latter  must  naturally  die  of  fatigue,  hunger  and 
disease,  The  Governor  of  Dor-el-Zor,  who  is  now 
at  Aleppo,  says  there  are  15,000  Armenians  in  his 
city.  Children  are  frequently  sold  to  prevent 
starvation,  as  the  Government  furnishes  practically 
uo  subsistence." 

To  he  cast  adrift  to  starve,  like  the  pariah 
dogs  of  Constantinople  !  That  was  the  destiny 
for  which  these  Armenians  had  been  deported 
so  many  hundred  agonising  miles.  Their  penulti- 
mate stage  at  that  city  on  the  Murad  Su  (we 
quoted  a  description  by  an  eye-witness  above) 
must  have  seemed  to  many  the  culmination  of  their 
misery.  Bat  here  in  Aleppo  they  were  suffering 
something  worse,  and  the  worst  of  all  was  still  to 
come.  We  are  introduced  to  it  by  the  sinister  name 
of  Der-el-Zor.  Aleppo  lies  in  an  oasis  of  the  desert, 
and  the  river  which  waters  it  buries  itself  in 
swamps  about  a  day's  journey  to  the  south-east  of 
tb.c  city.  These  swamps  were  allotted  to  the  first 
comers;  but  they  did  not  suffice  for  .so  great  a. 
company,  and  the  later  batches  were  forwarded  five 
days' journey  further  on,  to  the  town  of  Der-el-Zor, 
the  capital  of  the  next  province  down  the  course  of 
the  Euphrates,  where  the  river  takes  its  way 
rds  the  Persian  Gulf  through  the  scorching- 
pes  of  the  Arabian  amphitheatre. 

On  these  final   marches  the  victims   suffered  a 
change  of  tormentors.     The  Kurds  lingered  in  the 


61 

hills,  and  the  Bedawin  Arabs  took  up  their  role. 
"  These  poor  victims  of  their  oppressors'  lust  and 
hate  might  better  have  died  by  the  bullet  in  their 
mountain  home  than  be  dragged  about  the  country 
in  this  way.  Many  hundreds  have  died  from 
starvation  and  abuse  along  the  roadside,  and  nearly 
all  are  dying  of  starvation,  of  thirst,  of  being 
kidnapped  by  the  Anazeh  Arabs  in  the  desert 
where  they  have  been  taken  " — Arabs  who  them- 
selves succumb  to  starvation  in  their  native 
wilderness,  as  another  witness  points  out.  And  so 
they  came  to  Der-el-Zor. 

We  have  a  detailed  account  of  what  is  happening 
at  Der-el-Zor,  from  a  particularly  trustworthy 
source — the  testimony  of  Friiulein  Beatrice  Kohner, 
a  Swiss  missionary  from  Basle.  Friiulein  Rohner 
has  personally  witnessed  the  sufferings  of  the 
Armenians  at  Der-el-Zor,  and  has  published  her 
description  of  them  in  the  "  Sonnenaufgang " 
(Sunrise),  the  organ  of  the  "  Deutscher  Hilfsbund 
fur  Christliches  Liebeswerk  im  Orient "  (German 
League  of  Help  for  Work  of  Christian  Charity  in 
the  East).  Here  are  some  extracts  from  her 
narrative  : 

"  At  Der-el-Zor,  a  large  town  in  the  desert,  about 
six  days  drive  from  Aleppo,  we  saw  a  big  Khan,  all 
the  rooms,  the  roof  and  the  verandahs  of  which  were 
crowded  with  Armenians,  composed  mostly  of  wonieu 


02 


anil  children,  with,  a  few  old  inon.     They  had  slept 
on  their  blankets  wherever  they  could  find  any  shade. 


"  For  those  mountaineers  the  desert  climate  is 
terrible.  On  the  next  day  I  reached  a  large  Armenian 
camp  of  goat-skin  tents,  but  most  of  the  unfortunate 
people  were  sleeping  out  in  the  sun  on  the  burning 
Bands.  The  Turks  had  given  them  a  day's  rest  on 
account  of  the  large  number  of  sick.  It  was  evident 
from  their  clothing  that  these  people  had  been 
well-to-do ;  they  were  natives  of  Geben,  another 
village  near  Zeitoun,  and  were  led  by  their  religious 
head.  It  was  a  daily  occurrence  for  five  or  six  of  the 
children  of  these  people  to  die  by  the  wayside.  They 
were  just  burying  a  young  woman,  the  mother  of  a 
little  girl  nine  year3  of  age,  and  they  besought  me  to 
take  this  little  girl  with  me. 

"Those  who  have  no  experience  of  the  desert 
cannot  picture  to  themselves  the  sufferings  entailed 
by  such  a  journey — a  hilly  desert  without  shade 
marching  over  rough  and  rugged  rocks,  unable  to 
satisfy  one's  scorching  thirst  from  the  muddy  waters 
of  the  Euphrates,  which  winds  its  course  along  in 
close  proximity. 

"  On  the  next  day  I  met  another  carnp  of  theje 
Zeitoun  Armenians.  There  were  the  same  indescrib- 
able sufferings,  the  same  accounts  of  misery — *  Why 
do  they  not  kill  us  once  for  all  ?  *  rfSked  they.  '  For 
days  we  have  no  water  to  drink,  and  our  children  are 
crying  for  water.  At  night  the  Arabs  attack  us  ;  they 
steal  our  bedding,  our  clothes  that  we  have  been  able 
to  get  together  ;  they  carry  away  by  force  our  girls, 
and  outrage  our  women.     If  anv  of  us  are  unable  to 


f>3 

walk,  the  convoy  of  gendarmes  beat  us.  Some  of  owe 
women  threw  themselves  down  from  the  rocks  into 
the  Euphrates  in  order  to  save  their  honour — some  of 
these  with  their  infants  in  their  arms." 

We  read  the  same  horrors  in  brief  in  an  article 
(referred  to  above)  which  Professor  Hagopian 
contributed  to  the  Journal  "Armenia"  of  Marseilles 
on  September  1st,  1915  : 

"  These  unhappy  deported  people  (belonging  in 
great  part  to  Zeitoun)  have  been  chiefly  deposited  in 
two  places — one  section  of  them  in  a  swampy  region, 
which  has  hitherto  remained  uninhabited  on  account 
of  the  deadly  malaria  ;  while  the  remainder  have 
been  sent  to  a  still  more  unhealthy  place  in  the 
direction  of  the  Persian  Gulf  (i.e.  Der-el-Zor)  so  bad 
that  they  have  begged  to  be  sent  to  the  swamps  ;  but 
their  petition  has  not  been  granted." 

Yet  there  was  nothing  but  death  in  the  swamps. 
"  The  malaria  makes  ravages  among  them,  because 
of  the  complete  lack  of  food  and  shelter.  How 
cruelly  ironic  to  think  that  the  Government  protends 
to  be  sending  them  there  to  found  a  colony  :  and 
they  have  no  ploughs,  no  seeds  to  sow,  no  bread,  no 
abodes  ;  in  fact  they  are  sent  with  empty  hands.'' 
(A.C.R.) 

"  When  the  refugees  first  came  to  Aleppo,"  the 
same  witness  relates,  "  the  Christian  population 
bought  food  and  clothes  for  them  ;  but  the  Vali 
refused  to  allow  them  any  communication  with  the 
refugees,  pretending  that  they  had  all  they  wanted 


64 

A    few  days  later  they  could  get  the  help  they 

needed."       In     other    words,  the    Government's 

scheme    was    baffled     by    the  local     Christians' 
importunity — yet  not  for  long. 

"  The  Armenian  population  of  Cilicia  which  has 
been  exiled  to. the  provinces  of  Aleppo,  Der-el-Zor, 
and  Damascus,  will  certainly  die  of  hunger. 

"  According  to  our  information,  the  Government 
has  refused  to  leave  in  ihe;r  homes  even  the 
insignificant  Armenian  colonies  at  Aleppo  and  Ourfa, 
who  might  otherwise  have  succoured  their  unhappy 
brethren  who  have  been  driven  farther  south  ;  and 
the  Katholikos  of  Cilicia,  who  is  still  at  Aleppo,  is 
busy  distributing  the  succour  which  we  are  sending 
him." 

This  is  from  the  often  quoted  letter  dated 
August  15th,  1915,  and  addressed  to  a  high 
Armenian  ecclesiastic  on  neutral  territory.  It 
shows  how  the  Armenian  Katholikos  of  Cilicia,  the 
most  prominent  representative  of  his  nation  in 
the  vicinity,  exerted  himself  to  bring  succour 
when  the  local  Christians  had  failed.  And  this  is 
borne  out  by  an  earlier  letter  from  Constantinople, 
dated  June  15th,  1915,  and  published  on  August 
28th,  by  the  Armenian  paper  "  Gotchnag "  of 
New  York  : 

"  Amongst  the  thousand  families  deported  to  Sul- 
tanieh,  there  are  scarcely  fifty  men.  Most  have  made 
the  journey  on  foot,  some  of  the  old  women  and  of 


the  infants  have  died  on  the  road,  youug  women  with 
child  have  had  miscarriages,  and  have  been  left  on 
the  mountains.  Even  at  this  moment,  in  their  place 
of  exile,  these  deported  people  produce  a  dozen 
victims  daily,  the  toll  of  disease  and  hunger.  At 
Aleppo  it  requires  at  the  present  £35  (Turkish)  per 
diem  to  supply  the  deported  people  with  bread.  You 
can  imagine  to  yourself  what  must  be  their  situa- 
tion in  the  deserts  where  even  rhe  native  araba  arc 
famished. 

"A  sum  of  money  has  been  sent  from  Constanti- 
nople to  the  Katholikos  of  Cilicia  who  is  now  at 
Aleppo,  witness  of  the  misery  ami  agony  of  his  flock. 
Here,  at  least,  the  authorities  allow  the  distribution 
of  succour  to  these  unfortunates.  At  Sultanieh  it  has 
so  far  proved  impossible  to  bring  help  within  their 
reach,  for  the  Government  refuses  permission,  in 
spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  American  Embassy.11 

These  efforts  of  foreign  philanthropy  were  per- 
sistent, but  unavailing-  Another  Armenian  paper, 
the  "  Bahag"  records,  on  September  9tib,  that — 

"  A  Commission  of  fi  ve  members  has  left  America 
for  Constantinople  to  help  the  Armenians  in  distress. 
The  Mission  is  anxious  to  travel  in  the  interior  of  the 
country  to  acquaint  itself  with  the  situation  on  the 
actual  spot  and  take  corresponding  action;  but  the 
Turkish  Government  Las  refused  them  permission." 

Thus  the  Young  Turkish  Government,  when 
they  had  herded  the  remnant  of  the  Armenians  to 
their  "-.agricultural  colonies,"    insured   themselves 


GG 

against  any  measures  of  relief  that  might  at  the 
eleventh  hour  have  deprived  their  "  Armenian 
problem"'  of  its  complete  "  solution." 

Such,  in  outline,  is  the  story  of  what  has  hap- 
pened to  the  Armenian  population  which  was 
dwelling  in  peace  and  prosperity  throughout  the 
towns  and  villages  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  only 
eight  months  ago.  And  we  have  confined  our- 
selves  in  the  narrative  to  the  "  normal "  course  of 
the  crime,  to  the  scheme  as  it  was  organised  by 
the  Government  at  Constantinople  and  carried  out 
in  general  by  their  local  subordinates.  We  have 
not  mentioned  the  extravagances  of  wickedness  ; 
and  yet  the  average  of  horror  was  surpassed  in 
many  cases  by  the  initiative  of  particularly  fiendish 
governors  or  particularly  brutal  gendarmes.  Tor- 
tures, for  instance,  of  mediaeval  cruelty  were 
commonly  practised  before  their  butchery  upon  the 
Armenian  men,  and  the  following  statement  from 
a  foreign  resident  in  an  Anatolian  town  is  supported 
by  many  less  detailed  allusions  :— 

"  I  was  called  to  a  house  one  day,  where  I  saw  a 
sheet  which  originated  from  the  prison  and  which 
was  being  sent  to  the  wash.  I  got  to  the  bottom  of 
the  matter  by  the  help  of  two  very  reliable  persons 
who  witnessed  part  of  it  themselves 

"  The  prisoner  is  put  in  a  room.  Gendarmes 
standing  in  twos  at  both  sides  and  two  at  the  end  of 


67 

the  room  administer,  each  in  their  turn,  bastinadoes 
as  long  as  they  have  enough  force  in  them.  In  the 
time  of  the  Romans  40  strokes  were  administered  at 
the  very  most  ;  in  this  place,  however,  200,  300,  500 
and  even  800  strokes  are  administered.  The  foot 
swells  up,  then  bursts  open,  owing  to  the  numerous 
blows.  The  prisoner  is  then  carried  back  into  tho 
prison  and  to  bed  by  the  rest  of  the  prisoners.  Tho 
prisoners  who  become  unconscious  after  these  blows 
are  revived  by  means  of  cold  water,  which  is  thrown 
on  their  heads. 

"  On  the  next  day,  or,  more   exactly,  during  the 
night,  as  all  ill-treatments  are  carried  on  at  night  in 

,  as  well  as  in ,  the  whole  bastinadoing  is 

being  carried  on  again  in  spite  of  swollen  feet  and 

wounds.     I  was  then  in ,  but  in  that  prison  there 

were  also  30  prisoners  in  number,  and  all  had  their 
feet  in  such  a  state  that  they  began  to  burn  and  had 
to  be  amputated,  or  were  already  taken  off.  A  young 
man  was  beaten  to  death  in  the  space  of  live  minutes. 
Apart  from  the  bastinadoing,  other  methods  were 
employed,  too — such  as  putting  hot  irons  on  the 
chest."     (A.C.R.)* 

But  perhaps  the  most  hideous  variation  on  the 
official  programme  was  perpetrated  by  the  Gov- 
ernor of  Trebizond  : 

"  A   number   of    lighters    have   been    loaded    with 
people  at  different  times  and  sent  off  toward  .    It 

*  Another  testimony,  printed  in  the  same  report,  declares 
that  "  the  bastinado  was  used  frequently,  as  well  as  fire 
torture  (in  some  cases  eyes  are  said  to  have  been  put  out)." 
(A.C.R.) 


68 

is  generally  believed  that  such  persons  were  drov.  tied. 
During  the  early  days  a  large  caique,  or  lighter,  was 
loaded   with   men   supposed   to  be   members  of  the 

Armenian  committee  and  sent  off  toward .     Two 

days  later  a  certain  Russian  subject  and  one  of  those 

who  loft  in  the  boat  returned  overland  to ,  badly 

wounded  about  the  head  and  so  crazy  lie  could  not 
make  himself  understood. 

"  All  he  could  say  was  '  Boom  !  Boom  !  '  He  was 
arrested,  by  the  authorities  and  taken  to  the  Munici- 
pal Hospital,  where  he  died  the  following  day.     A 

Turk   said  this  boat  was  met  riot  far  from  by 

another  boat  containing  gendarmes,  who  proceeded  to 
kill  all  the  men  and  throw  them  overboard.  They 
thought  they  had  killed  them  all,  but  this  Russian, 
who  was  big  and  powerful,  was  only  wounded  and 
swam  ashore  unnoticed.     A  number  of  such  caiques 

have  left  loaded  with   men.  and  usually  they 

return  empty  after  a  few  hours/' 

This  account  is  quoted  from  ;i  deposition  in  the 
American  Committee's  report,  and  the  tale  is  cor- 
roborated from  innumerable  quarters.  It  has 
travelled  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
Ottoman  Empire,  and  indeed  the  evidence  for  it 
was  convincing  enough.  The  same  witness  goes 
on  to  describe  how  "A  number  of  bodies  of  women 
and  children  have  lately  been  thrown  up  by  the 
sea  upon  the  sandy  beach  below  the  walls  of  the 
Italian  monastery  on  this  coast,  and  were  buried  by 
Greek  women  in  the  sand  where  they  were  found." 


6i> 


V.  FALSE  EXCUSES. 

All  this  horror,  both  the  concerted  crime  and  its 
local  embellishments,  was  inflicted  upon  the  Arme- 
nians without  a  shadow  of  provocation.  "  We  are 
at  war,"  the  Turkish  Government  will  probably 
reply  ;  "  We  are  fighting  for  our  existence.  The 
Armenians  were  hoping  for  the  victory  of  our 
enemies  ;  they  were  plotting  to  bring  that  victory 
about.  They  were  traitors  at  large  in  a  war-zone, 
and  we  were  compelled  to  proceed  against  them 
with  military  severity."  But  such  excuses  are 
entirely  contradicted  by  the  facts.  These  Arme- 
nians were  not  inhabitants  of  a  war-zone.  None 
of  the  towns  and  villages  from  which  they  were 
systematically  deported  to  their  death  were  any- 
where near  the  seat  of  hostilities.  They  were  all 
in  the  interior  of  Anatolia,  equally  far  removed 
from  the  Caucasian  frontier  and  from  the  Dar- 
danelles. There  was  no  possibility  of  their 
co-operating  with  the  armies  of  the  Entente,  and  it 
was  equall}7  impossible  that  they  should  attempt  an 
insurrection  by  themselves,  for  they  were  not  a 
compact  community.  They  were  scattered  in  small 
settlements  over  a  wide  country,  and  were  every 


70 

where  in  a  minority  as  compared  with  their  Turkish 
neighbours.  Civil  and  military  power  were  safely 
in  Turkish  hands,  and  the  Armenians  were  parti- 
cularly unlikely  to  attempt  a  coup  de  main.  It 
must  be  repented  that  these  Armenian  townsfolk 
were  essentially  peaceable,  industrious  people,  as 
unpractised  in  arms*  and  as  unfamiliar  with  the 
idea  of  violence  as  the  urban  population  in  Western 
Europe.  The  Ottoman  Government  cannot  possibly 
disguise  its  crime  as  a  preventive  measure,  for  the 
Armenians  were  so  far  from  harbouring  designs 
against  it  beforehand,  that  they  actually  forebore 
resistance  even  after  the  Government  had  issued 
their  death-warrant,  In  fact,  there  are  actually 
only  two  cases  recorded  in  which  the  deporta- 
tion scheme  encountered  active  opposition  at  all. 
There  was  the  successful  opposition  in  the  Antioch 
district,  where  the  Armenian  villagers  took  to  the 
hills,  and  fought  for  seven  weeks  with  their  backs 
to  the  sea  till  they  were  almost  miraculously  rescued 
by  the  French  fleet,  under  circumstances  already 
relate  1  above.  And  there  was  the  desperate  heroism 
of  Shabin  Kar.diissar,  a  town  in  the  hinter  land  of 
Trebizond,  where  -1,000  Armenians  took  up  arms 
at  the  summons  to  deportation,  and  held  out  against 
the  Turkish  troops  from  the  middle  of  May  to  the 

*  For  years  the  Government  had  taken  rigorous  measures 
to  prevent  thoni  from  possessing  themselves  of  rifles. 


7J 

beginning  of  July.  Then  the  Turks  brought  up 
reinforcements*  and  artillery  and  overwhelmed  the 
town  with  case.  "  Karahissar,"  it  is  stated  in  the 
letter  to  the  Armenian  ecclesiastic,  "  was  bombarded; 
and  the  whole  population,  of  the  country  districts 
as  well  as  the  town,  has  been  massacred  without 
pity,  not  excepting  the  bishop  himself."  Nothing 
could  show  better  than  this  how  little  the  Turkish 
Government  had  to  fear  from  the  Armenians,  and 
how  eagerly  it  seized  upon  the  quickest  means  to 
their  extermination,  as  soon  as  an  opportunity 
appeared. 

And  this  was  the  Government's  procedure  to- 
wards the  helpless,  unsuspecting  Armenians  in  the 
towns.  When  it  had  to  deal  with  the  less  tiact- 
abh  peasant  communities  in  the  hills,  it  gave  up 
any  pretence  of  concealing  its  intentions,  and 
without  waiting  to  summon  them  for  deoortation, 
at  once  attacked  them  nakedly  with  the  sword. 
Such  was  the  treatment  of  Zeitoun,  an  Armenian 
settlement  which  for  eight  hundred  years  had 
lived  and  prospered  in  virtual  independence  among 
the  mountains  that  overlook  the  Cilician  plain. 

The  Zeitounlis  were  distinguished  from  the  other 
Armenians  of  Cilicia.  by  the  possession  of"  arms, 
and  they  seem  to  have  girded  themselves  betimes 
for  the  approaching  death-struggle.  But  they 
were  disarmed,  it  is   said,  by  the  promise  that,  if 


72 

they  submitted,  their  defenceless  brethren  in  the 
lowland  villages  would  be  ransomed  from  destruc- 
tion by  their  act.  The  Turkish  promise  was 
broken,  of  course,  as  soon  as  the  Turkish  object 
was  secured  ;  and.  taken  at  such  a  disadvantage, 
the  heroic  mountaineers  inevitably  succumbed. 

"  The  bloody  curtain  has  fallen  over  Zeitoun,  and 
the  fighting  stock  of  these  brave  mountaineers  has 
been  subdued  in  this  memorable  year  of  crime  I  As 
the  faithful  followers  and  remnants  of  the  Roupenian 
dynasty,  they  had  hitherto  kept  their  home3  intact 
and  had  successfully  withstood  the  Turkish  inroads. 
They  have  at  last  been  overcome  by  heavy  Turkish 
forces,  and  the  stronghold  of  Zeitoun  is  now  in  tho 
hands  of  the  enemy  '. 

"  It  appears  that  after  the  failure  last  winter  of  the 
project.^  I  Turkish  plan  of  compaign  against  the  Suez 
Canal,  Djemal  Pasha,  the  Commander  of  the  Syrian 
Army,  led  a  large  force  of  regulars  against  Zeitoua. 
The  Zeitounlis  entrenched  themselves  in  their  fast- 
nesses and  fought  for  two  or  three  months  against  an 
enemy  which  outnumbered  them  greatly,  besides 
being  by  heavy  artillery,  hoping  that  rein- 

forcements would  arrive  in  time  for  their  support. 
But  no  help  came  and  they  fought  to  their  last  car- 
tridge. It  was  towards  the  end  of  May  that  Zeitoun 
was  taken  by  the  Turks,  who  massacred  all  the 
inhabitants  they  found.  A  few  hundred  old  women 
are  said  to  have  been  deported  to  Angora,  and  others 
to  the  plains  of  Mesopotamia,  where  report  says  they 
ar  ■".  ejected  to  grave  indignities  " — indignities 


73 

with  which  we  haw  been  acquainted  already  in 
Fraulein  Bonner's  description  of  Dev-el-Zor.  and 
which  xhe  writer  just  quoted  would  have  called  by  a 
stronger  name,  bad  he  been  acquainted  with  ber 
terrible  narrative. 

This  is  the  end  of  Zeitoun,  as  it  is  narrated  in 
the  July  issue  of  the  London  journal  "  Arc 
Zeitoun  lias  perished,  but  further  Eastward  another 
peasant  community,  Sassoun,  has  been  holding  the 
assassins  desperately  at  bay.  Sassoun  is  a  federa- 
tion of  forty  Armenian  villages,  situated  in  the 
hill  country  which  separates  the  upper  basin  of  the 
Tigris  from  the  gorge  of  the  Murad  Su.  It  ha- 
led a  semi-independent,  almost  self-sufficing  exist- 
ence for  centuries,  to  the  chagrin  of  the  Ottoman 
Government  and  the  envy  of  its  less  prosperous 
neighbours  the  Kurds.  At  Sassoun  A.bd-ul- 
Hamid  ma-lea  preliminary  experiment  in  ma- 
in 1895,  and  in  May.  1915.  the  Young  Turk- 
marked  it  i  Zeitoun,  for  destructi< 

On     Septeml  er     loth     the     Armenian     journal 
11  Horizc  -  published  the  foilowii 

munication  from  Tgdir.  a       -  -station  on  the  Ri 
Turkish  frontier. 

"Ayonng  man  who  snoceedcd  in  escaping  from 
the   viUagi  b   ol  i  on    August    2nd   gives  the 

following    information: — 'Sassoun,    too.    has    bees 


74 

visited  with  massacre.  The  villages  of  the  plain  have 
all  been  ravaged.  Rouben  (one  o£  the  leaders  in  the 
defence),  is  still  holding  out  with  his  lion-hearted 
companions,  a  tiny  but  invincible  band,  against  the 
sinister  foe.  But  his  days  are  numbered.  To  save 
him  one  would  havo  to  lose  no  time  in  putting  him 
in  possession  of  unlimited  quantities  of  ammunition.' " 

The  Sassoimlis  are  men  of  resource.  They  have 
even  learnt  to  manufacture  ammunition  from  native 
materials.  But  they  are  being  besieged  by  Turkish 
regular  troops  with  heavy  guns,  and  all  the  Kurds 
are  on  the  war  path  against  them.  We  may  hear 
any  clay  that  Sassoun  has  fallen,  and  that  15,000 
more  Armenians  have  been  ruthlessly  destroyed. 
That  is  how  the  Turks  are  dealing  with  the  few 
Armenians  in  a  position  to  defend  themselves. 
Yet  the  only  sin  of  Sassoun  and  Zeitoun  has  been 
their  invidious  prosperity — a  sin  which  has  no 
connection  whatever  with  the  Avar.  In  their  case 
as  in  the  rest,  the  "  war-zone "  pretext  utterly 
breaks  down,  and  there  is  only  one  instance  in 
which  it  can  be  put  forward  with  any  show  of 
justification — that  of  the  Armenians  resident  at 
Constantinople  itself  or  in  its  immediate  neigh- 
bourhood. These  Armenians  are  perhaps  the  most 
orderly  and  industrious  of  any  in  the  Ottoman 
Empire,  yet  as  their  situation  might  have  enabled 
them  to  work  in  collusion  with  the  Allied  forces  at 
the  Dardanelles,  we  will  examine  their  treatment 


75 

for  a  moment,  to  .sec  whether  military  considera- 
tions may,  here  at  least,  have  been  the  real  motive 
for  their  deportation.  There  is  ample  evidence  of 
the  facts  at  onr  disposal. 

"  At  Adrianople,  by  order  of  the  Government,  all 
Armenian  officials  in  administrative,  public  and 
financial  institutions  have  been  dismissed.  Turkish 
soldiers  brought  in  from  other  districts  are  com- 
mitting unheard-of  atrocities.  The  Armenians  are 
continually  exposed  to  persecutions.  About  fifty 
Armenians  from  tie  city  have  been  imprisoned  or 
exiled.  The  Armenians  are  forbidden  to  go  abroad, 
or  even  to  travel  about  in  the  Province. 

"  The  Armenians  of  Keshan  have  been  deported. 
The  Armenian  boatmen  of  Silivri  have  been  thrown 
into  prison  on  the  charge  of  revichialling  the  English 
submarines. 

"The  Armenian  church  and  convent  at  Dbimotika 
have  been  confiscated  by  the  Government.  The 
Armenians  of  this  locality  bave  been  given  two 
weeks'  grace  to  emigrate  elsewhere.  For  the  depor- 
tation of  the  Armenians  of  Malgara  the  same  two 
weeks'  grace  has  been  given.  Their  houses  will  be 
occupied  by  the  Turks  who  have  emigrated  from 
Serbia.  The  Armenians  of  Tchorlou  have  been 
deported." 

This  is  quoted  from  a  letter  written  from  Con- 
stantinople which  was  published  on  August  28th 
by  the   Armenian    journal   "  Goichnag "    of    New 


76 

York,  ami  wo  may  follow  the  sequel  in  the  "  Letter 
to  an  Ecclesiastic'"*  so  often  quoted  before  : — 

••  The  scheme  has  just  been  put  into  execution  in 
lli."  very  neighbourhood  of  Constantinople.  The 
bulk  of  the  Armenians  in  the  district  of  Ismid  and 
Province  of  Broussa  have  been  forcibly  removed 
to  Mesopotamia,  leaving  their  hearths  and  possessions. 
They  have  likewise  removed  the  population  of  Ada- 
pazar,  Ismid,  Gegveh,  Armacha,  and  the  neighbour- 
hood— in  fact  of  all  the  villages  in  the  Ismid 
district,  except  Bagtchedjik,  which  has  been  allowed 
a  few  days'  reprieve.     .     .     . 

"  Now  it  is  the  turn  of  Constantinople,  and  the 
population,  which  has  been  stricken  with  acute 
panic,  is  in  any  case  waiting  from  moment  to 
moment  for  the  execution  of  its  doom.  The  arrests 
are  innumerable,  and  those  arrested  are  at  once 
removed  from  the  capital.  Certainly  most  of  them 
will  not  survive.  It  is  the  retail  shopkeepers,  born 
in  the  provinces  but  settled  at  Constantinople,  that 
have  been  removed  up  till  now,  including  (six  names 
'  given  as  specimens).  Efforts  are  being  made  to  save 
at  least  the  Armenian  population  of  Constantinople 
i'vom  this  horrible  extermination  of  the  Armenian 
nation,  in  order  that  in  the  future  we  may  have  at 
least  some  point  d'appui  for  the  Armenian  cause  in 
Turkey." 


■  This  letter  bears  date  August  15th,  and  musr, 
therefore,  be  more  recent  than  one  published  in  New 
York  on  August  28th,  considering  the  time  it  takes  for 
the  mail  to  travel  from  Constantinople  to  America. 


77 

But  here,  too,  all  efforts  were  vain.  There  had 
been  a  preliminary  assault  upon  the  Armenians  of 
the  capital  as  early  as  June  15th,  when  twenty- 
six  of  their  most  prominent  representatives  were 
hanged  in  public  after  summary  court-martial/* 
Yet  that  had  passed,  and  it  would  have  been  a 
light  enough  sacrifice  to  pay  for  the  immunity  of: 
the  rest.  But  the  Government  was  only  biding 
its  time.  On  September^  th,  "  Gotchnagv  reported 
that  :— 

"  In  all  the  quarters  of  Constantinople  they  have 
begun  to  draw  up  a  register  of  Armenians,  making 
separate  lists  of  those  who  are  immigrants  from 
Armenia  and  those  who  were  born  at  Constanti- 
nople. It  is  supposed  that  they  are  going  to  deport 
those  that  came  from  Armenia." 

After  this,  events  followed  quickly.  On 
September  5th,  the  "Horizon  "  of  Tiflis  published  a 
telegram  from  Bukarest,  announcing  that — 

"The  Turks  are  continuing   their  work  of  exter- 
minating the  Armenians.     From  Constantinople  they 
have  deported  the  Armenian   men.      Ten  thousand 
deported  men  have  already  been  massacred   in   the 
mountains  of  Ismid." 
The  official    scheme   once   more    in    operation  ! 
After  reading   this,  we  are  not  surprised  to  learn 
from    other   sources    that    Armenian    women    and 

*  Twenty  of  the  names  are  published  in  the  July 
issue  of  the  journal  "  Ararat." 


child  m    Constantinople    and     Thrace    have 

arrived  to  swell  the   "  agricultural  colony "  in  the 
Anatolian  desert. 

Thus  the  Armenians  of  the  suburban  provinces 
been  condemned  in  the  end  to  the  same 
horrible  late  as  their  Anatolian  brethren.  "  Ar- 
menian boatmen  at  Silivri  may  have  revictualled 
British  .submarine-  I" — that  is  the  excuse  for  it  all. 
-  the  real  motive.  That  is  revealed  in 
the  i:  tal  notification  that  "their  houses  will 

be  occupied  by  Turkish  refugees  from  Serbia,"  and 
re  inevitably  reminded  of  Talaat  Bey's   boast 
that  ,:  after  this  there  will  be  no  Armenian  question 
for  fifty 

ion  :"  is,  after  all.  the  cue.     "  As 

the  Armenian,   the  place   where  he  was  shall 

7  him  no  more,  and  the  Turk  shall  inherit  his 

stance  and  his   dwelling."     When  we  re-read 

vidence  in  this  light,  we  see  the  signs  of  such  a 

policy  appeal     g  sjularity. 

"Pout  en  cleared  of  Armeni 

place   the    Armenia:. 
exiled.     The  Turks  are  in  perfect  delirium.'" 

•'More   than  Armeni  :.-.   that    have   been. 

:om  a  certain  province,  are  be! 
thrown  int  ribe#,  leai 

lens  and  til! 
ahadjirs.     I'  all 


79 
unfortunate   people  have   not  even  graves   for  their 

"As  soon  as  the  Armenian  refugees  left  their 
houses,  niouhadjirs  from  Thrace  took  possession  of 
them.  The  former  had  been  forbidden  to  take 
anything  with  them,  and  they  themselves  saw  all 
their  goods  pass  into  other  hands.  There  niust  be 
about  20,000  to  25,000  Turks  in  this  town  now,  and 
the  name  of  the  town  seems  to  have  been  changed  to 
a  Turkish  one/' 

These  three  testimonies  are  taken  from  the 
American  Committee's  Report ;  and  here  is  an 
extract  from  a  letter,  written  from  Athens  and 
dated  Jnly  8th,  which  describes  the  process  of 
eupplantation  in  still  more  incriminating  detail  : 

''Two  missionaries  of  neutral  nationality,  with 
whom  I  am  personally  acquainted,  passed  through. 
Athens  yesterday.  They  just  began  to  inform  me 
by  saying  that  the  condition  of  the  Armenians  in 
Cilicia  was  awful.  The  city  of  Dortyol.  alter  having 
been  evacuated  of  its  Armenian  population,  has  been 
occupied  by  Turkish  families.  The  whole  of  the 
Armenian  inhabitants  have  been  sent  away,  turned 
out  of  their  homes,  and  are  naturally  suffering  from 
hunger.  The  exposure  is  something  that  cannot 
described.  Before  evacuation,  some  nine  leading 
merchants   were    hanged     .    .    . 

"  Zeiioun  has  met  the  same  fate.  There  is  not  a 
single  Armenian  left  in  Zeitoun,  and  all  the  h< 

*  Extract  from  ai  report  dated  .Tune  18tb,  1! 


so 

are  occupied  by  Turkish  people.  My  friends  could 
not  understand  exactly  what  had  happened  to  the 
Zeitouniots,*  but  the  fact  is  that  special  care  has 
been  taken  by  the  Turkish  authorities  that  too 
many  of  them  should  not  live  together.  Attempts 
have  been  made  to  make  them  Mohammedans,  and 
it  is  known  that  the  authorities  attempted  foTdistri- 
bute  one,  two,  or  three  families  to  each  Turkish 
village  in  the  district  of  Marash. 

"They  have  attempted  to  do  the  same  thing  to 
Had j in,  but.  somehow  or  other,  only  half  the  in- 
habitants have  left.  Naturally  the  homes  of  these 
have  been  occupied  by  Turks. 

"The  Turks  of  Tarsos  and  Adana  are  showing 
the  same  disposition  as  they  did  before  the  massacres 
of  1909. 

"  Missionaries  from  Beirout  state  that  the  same  per- 
secution is  in  force  against  Christian  Syrians." 

There  could  be  no  more  damning  pieces  of 
evidence  than  these,  for  they  prove  incontrovertibly 
that  the  crime  against  the  Armenian  race  was 
deliberate,  carefully  thought  out,  and  highly 
organised  in  its  execution.  These  "  mouhadjirs  " 
were  Moslems  from  Europe,  emigrants  from  lost 
Ottoman  provinces  which  had  passed  under 
Christian  rule.  They  had  been  mustering  since 
the  Balkan  War  within  the  western  fringe  of  the 
diminished  Ottoman  Empire,  a  drifting,  unmarsh- 

*  After  reading  Friiulein  Rohner's  evidence  from  Der- 
el-Zor,  we  are  better  informed. 


ailed  horde  And  now  .suddenly  we  find  them 
distributed  through  the  Asiatic  provinces,  even  us 
far  afield  as  (  ilicia,  in  groups  nicely  proportioned 
to  the  Armenian  population  in  each  locality,  and 
ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  occupy  the 
Armenians'  places,  as  soon  as  the  decree  for  their 
deportation  had  gone  forth.  "As  soon  as  the 
Armenian  refugees  left  their  houses,  mouhadjirs 
from  Thrace  took  possession  of  them."  There  is 
no  hitch  here,  no  saving  procrastination.  The 
organisation  is  masterly,  and  conclusive  in  its 
implication.  And  no  consideration  was  to  exempt 
any  portion  of  the  race  from  the  common  doom. 
The  Armenians  who  had  been  conscribed  for  the 
Ottoman  army  and  were  actually  serving"  in  its 
ranks,  might  at  least  have  been  protected  by  the 
uniform  they  wore.  Instead,  their  service  merely 
organised  them  for  the  slaughter.  We  have 
mentioned  how  they  were  disarmed  and  put  to 
labour  upon  the  communications  behind  the 
Caucasian  front.  Here  is  the  final  chapter  in  their 
story. 

"The  Armenian  soldiers,  too,  nave  undergone  the 
same  fate.  To  begin  with,  all  have  been  disarmed, 
;md  are  at  work  constructing  roads.  We  know  from 
a  trustworthy  source  that  the  Armenian  soldiers  of 
the  province  of  Erzeroum,  at  work  on  the  Erzeroum- 
Erzindjan  road,  have  all  been  massacred.  The 
Armenian  soldiers  of  the  province  of  Diyarbekir 
have  all  been  massacred  on  the  Diyarbekir-Ourfa  and 


82 

Diyarbekir-Kharpout  roads.  However,  from  Kharpout 
1,800  young  Armenians  were  despatched  as  soldiers 
to  Diyarbekir  to  work  there.  All  were  massacred  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Arghana.  "We  have  no  newa 
from  the  other  districts,  but  the  same  fate  has 
assuredly  been  inflicted  upon  them." 

This  is  an  extract  from  the  letter  addressed  to  a 
high  Armenian  ecclesiastic,  and  it  is  supported  by 
the  independent  and  direct  testimony  of  a  Moslem 
soldier  in  one  of  the  labour-battalions  in  question, 
who  had  been  on  fatigue-duty  burying  his 
massacred  Christian  comrades.     (A.C.R.) 

Thus  the  Ottoman  Government  sacrificed  even 
military  advantage  to  the  complete  execution  of  its 
Armenian  scheme  ;  and  the  deed  is  perhaps  the 
meanest,  though  far  from  the  most  wicked,  of  all 
that  it  has  perpetrated.  Yet  this,  too,  has 
been  done  without  a  shadow  of  excuse,  to 
submissive  labourers  in  peaceful  districts,  separated 
by  impassable  mountains  from  the  seat  of  war. 
"When  we  turn  to  what  has  happened  in  the  real 
war-zone,  we  are  confronted  with  atrocities  so 
hideous  that  they  could  never  be  palliated  by  the 
most  vital  military  necessity. 


83 


VI.  MURDER  OUTRIGHT. 

Turkey's  eastern  war-zone  ran  through  the  home- 
country  of  the  Armenian  race.  For  we  have  already 
explained  that  the  Armenians  murdered  by  deporta- 
tion were  not  in  general  the  people  of  Armenia 
proper,  but  for  the  most  part  old-established 
settlements  scattered  through  the  towns  of  Anatolia 
and  Cilicia  towards  the  west.  In  Armenia  proper 
the  Armenians  were  not  confined  to  the  towns  ; 
the  peasantry  in  the  open  country  was  Armenian 
as  well.  In  fact,  somewhat  more  than  half 
the  Armenians  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  were 
still  concentrated,  before  the  outbreak  of  war, 
in  these  eastern  inarches  ;  so  that  the  region 
defined  by  the  upper  courses  of  the  Euphrates  and 
Tigris  on  the  west  and  south,  and  by  the  Russian 
and  Persian  frontiers  on  the  north  and  east,  was 
occupied  by  a  comparatively  homogeneous  Armenian 
population,  except  for  the  settlements  of  intrusive 
Kurds.  Here  was  the  historical  centre  of  the 
nation,  its  most  famous  cities,  its  finest  monuments 
of  architecture  and  art  ;  and  here,  precisely,  the 
Russian  and  Ottoman  battle  lines  have  swayed  to 
and  fro  for  nearly  a  year — a  year  of  disaster  for  the 
Armenian  race. 


84 

In  brief,  the  course  of  the  campaign  has  been  us 
follows.     In  the  early  winter,  almost  immediately 
after  they  had   intervened  in  the  war,  the  Turks 
look    the   offensive    on    a    large    scale   across   the 
Russian  frontier,  and  sent  another  army  eastward 
to  invade  the  Persian  province  of  Azerbaijan  ;  both 
movements    broke    down,   and   before    the   spring 
of    1915    their    forces    had    been    driven    out    of 
Trans-Caucasia   again  and  compelled  to  evacuate 
Azerbaijan,    after   a   transitory   occupation    of   its 
capital  Tabriz.     When  the  Russians  began  to  cross 
the  frontier  in  their  turm  the  Ottoman  authorities 
in  the  border-province  of  Van  let  loose  the  Turkish 
troops  and  Kurdish   irregulars  on  the  Armenian 
population.     In    the    countryside    the    Armenians 
were  overwhelmed,  but  in  the  town  of  Van  itself, 
when  they  had   seen    some  of  their  leading   men 
murdered,  and   massacre  overshadowing  the  rest, 
they  took    up   arms,  expelled  the  murderers,  and 
stood  a  siege  of  27  days — 1,500  defenders  against 
5,000  assailants  equipped  with  artillery — till  they 
were     triumphantly    relieved     by   the    advancing 
Russians   on    May    17th,       Thereby,    the   eastern 
shore  of  Lake  Van  was  cleared  of  the  enemy — the 
basin  of  Lake  Van  is  the  very  heart  of  Armenia — 
and   in   the   early    summer   months   the    Russian 
forces  pushed  slowly  round  the  lake  towards  the 
west.      But   about   the   end  of   July,    the    Turks 
received   heavy  reinforcements,  and,  resuming  the 


85 

offensive,  succeeded  in  reoccupying  Van.  Again 
after  three  weeks  they  were  ejected  from  their 
positions,  and  now  the  line  runs  approximately 
where  it  ran  in  June — right  across  the  basin  of  Van, 
with  the  lake  itself  dividing  the  combatants.  Once 
more  the  Russians  seem  to  be  slowly  forging 
ahead,  clearing  the  country  of  Turk  and  Kurd. 
But  the  geographical  conditions  are  difficult,  and 
the  enemy  is  superior  in  numbers.  The  Russians 
may  complete  the  liberation  of -Armenia  in  time  ; 
but  meanwhile  the  worst  catastrophes  have  occurred, 
and  the  peasantry  that  was  anxiously  awaiting 
their  arrival  has  either  been  annihilated  by  massacre 
or  scattered  abroad  in  exile  and  destitution. 

The  Turco- Kurdish  soldiery  began  to  indulge 
itself  in  atrocities  the  moment  hostilities  broke  out. 
The  Persian  province  of  Azerbaijan  contains  a  large 
population  of  Syriac  Christians,  and  the  sufferings 
of  these  people  at  the  hands  of  the  invading  hordes 
are  described  with  terrible  detail  in  letters  from 
German  missionaries*  resident  among  them,  letters 
which  were  published  on  October  18th  in  the  Dutch 
newspaper  "  de  Nieuwe  Rotter damsche  Coura7it."i 

*  Members  of  the  "  Deutsche  Orient-Mission." 
f  The  "Courant  "  is  the  leading  journal  of  Holland, 
and  it  is  by  no  means  inclined  to  give  undue  prominence 
to  facts  of  ill-savour  to  Germany  or  her  allies  ;  for  it  i3 
one  of  the  few  Dutch  papers  that  have  been  privileged 
by  the  German  Administration  to  sell  copies  in  Belgium. 


8i 

From  the  contents  of  these  letters  we  select  the 

following  : — 

"The  latest"  news  is  that  £,000  Syrians  and  100 
Armenians  have  died  of  disease  alone,  at  the  missions, 
within  the  last  five  months.  All  villages  in  the 
surrounding  district,  ■with  tv,  o  or  three  exceptions 
have  heen  plundered  and  burnt,  20,000  Christians 
have  b:en  slaughtered  in  Ourmia  and  its  environs 
Many  churches  have  been  destroyed  and  burnt,  and 
also  many  houses  in  the  town     .     .     .     ." 

And  here  is  a  description  (rum  another  letter  : — 
"  In  Haftewan  and  Salmast  850  corpses,  "without 
heads,  have  been  recovered  from  the  wells  and 
cisterns  alone.  Why  ?  Because  the  commanding 
officer  had  put  a  price  on  every  Christian  head.  In 
Haftewan  alone  more  than  500  women  and  girls 
were  delivered  to  the  Kurds  at  Sandjhulak.  One 
can  imagine  the  fate  of  these  unfortunate  creatures. 
In  Diliman  crowds  of  Christians  were  thrown  into 
prison  and  compelled  to  accept  Islam.  The  men 
were  circumcised.  Gulpardjin,  the  richest  village 
in  the  Ourmia  province,  has  been  razed  to  the  ground. 
The  men  were  slain,  the  good-looking  women  and 
girls  carried  away.  The  same  in  Babaru.  Hundreds 
of  women  jumped  into  the  deep  river,  when  they 
saw  how  many  of  their  sisters  were  violated  by  the 
hands  of  brigands,  in  broad  daylight,  in  the  middle 
of  the  road.  So  also  at  Miandoab  in  the  Suldus 
district." 

These  atrocities  on  foreign  ground  are  horrible 

enough,  but  they  are  altogether  dwarfed  in  scale 


*7 

by  what  the  Turks  have  been  doing  more  recently 
in  their  own  territory.  Their  renewed  offensive 
last  July  was  accompanied  by  the  complete  exter- 
mination of  the  Armenian  peasantry  in  the  districts 
immediately  behind  their  lines,  as  well  as  over  the 
country  they  traversed  in  their  advance. 

The  first  news    of  this  reached   the    ':  Nov 
Vryemya  "  of  Petrograd  on  July  22nd. 

"  The  Turkish  atrocities  in  the  district  of  Bitlis 
are  indescribable.  After  having  massacred  the 
■whole  male  population  of  this  district,  the  Turks 
collected  9,000  women  and  children  from  the  sur- 
rounding villages,  and  drove  them  in  upon  Bitlis. 
Two  days  later  they  marched  them  out  to  the  bank 
of  the  Tigris,  shot  them  all,  and  threw  the  9 
corpses  into  the  river. 

"On  the  Euphrates,  the  Turks  have  out  down 
more  than  1,000  Armenians,  throwing  their  bodies 
into  the  river.  At  the  same  time,  four  battalions 
were  ordered  to  march  upan  the  valley  of  Moush, 
to  finish,  with  the  12,000  Armenians  inhabiting  this 
valley.  According  to  the  latest  information,  the 
massacre  has  already  begun.  The  Armenians  are 
resisting,  but  through  lack  of  cartridges  they  will 
all  be  exterminated  by  the  Turks.  All  the 
Armenians  in  the  Diyarbekir  region  will  likewise 
be  massacred." 

At  Moushj  at  any  rate,  it  was  not  long  before 
the  ghastly  rumour  was  confirmed.  On  August 
20th  the  journal  t;  Horizon'''  of  Tinis,  reported  that : 

"  The  Turks  have  massacred  the  whole  male 
population    in    the    plain    of   Moush.      Only    5,000 


88 

people  have  succeeded  in  escaping  and  finding 
refuge  at  Sassoun,  where  the  insurgent  Armenians 
are  still  holding  out." 

Yet  these  vaguer  narratives  were  not  so  terrible 
as  the  more  detailed  account  which  found  its  way  a 
month  later  to  America,  and  was  published  on 
September  4th,  by  the  Armenian  journal 
"  Gotchnag  "  of  New   York  : 

"Incredible  news  comes  in  about  the  massacres 
at  Bitlis.  In  one  village  1,000  Armenians  — 
men,  women  and  children— have  been  crowded  into 
a  wooden  house,  and  the  house  set  on  fire.  In 
another  large  village  of  the  district,  only  36 
people  have  escaped  the  massacre.  In  another, 
they  roped  together  men  and  women  by  dozens, 
and  threw  them  into  the  Lake  of  Van.  A  young 
Armenian  of  Bitlis,  who  was  in  the  army,  and  who, 
after  being  disarmed  and  employed  on  road-making, 
succeeded  in  escaping  and  reaching  Van,  relates 
that  the  ex-vali  of  Van,  Djevat  Bey,  has  had  all 
males  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and  forty 
massacred  at  Bitlis.  He  has  had  their  families 
deported  in  the  direction  of  Sert,  but  has  kept  with 
him  all  the  prettiest  girls.  Bitlis  is  now  filled 
by  tens  of  thousands  of  Turkish  and  Kurdish 
mouhadjirs.^ 

The  tragedy  of  the  Armenians  in  the  war- zone 
was  thus  of  a  different  complexion  from  their 
tragedy  in  the  cities  of  Anatolia.  There  was  more 
barbaric    crudity    here   in    the   manner    of    their 


8'J 

destruction,  and  we  miss  the  fiendish  ingenuity  of 
the  deportations.  Yet  where  Enver  slew  his 
thousands,  Djevat  was  slaying  his  tens  of  thousands  ; 
for  he  was  aiming  at  nothing  less  than  the  extinc- 
tion of  the  Armenia!!  population  in  the  homeland 
of  the  race. 

Yet  he  did  uot  altogether  succeed.  'The  retiring 
Russians  contested  stubbornly  every  mile  of  ground, 
and  won  respite  for  a  certain  proportion  of  the 
non-combatants  to  evacuate  their  threatened  homes 
m  time.  On  that  panic-journey  through  the 
mountains  the  sufferings  of  these  refugees  were 
terrible,  and  there  are  incidents  that  rival  the 
agony  of  their  brethren  who  were  being  herded 
over  those  other  mountains  of  Anatolia  hundreds 
of  miles  away,  under  the  lash  of  the  Turkish 
gendarmes.  ';  On  the  road,"  writes  one  of  the 
German  missionaries  in  Azerbaijan,  "  I  found  four 
little  children.  The  mother  sat  on  the  ground,  her 
back  resting  against  a  wall.  The  hollow-eyed 
children  ran  up  to  me,  stretching  out  their  hands 
and  crying  ;  Bread  !  Dread  !  '  When  I  came 
closer  to  the  mother,  \  saw  that  she  was 
dying     ...."' 

Ami  here  is  a  description  of  the  whole  scene, 
from  a  resident  in  Trans-Caucasia,  who  went  to  the 
frontier-village  of  [gdir  to  arrange  for  the  reception 


90 

of    the    refugees,    and    watched    the    harrowing 
procession  passing  by  : 

"  I  wonder  if  it  is  possible  to  witness  a  more 
agonising  sight  than  the  present  one.  Human 
beings  are  dying  in  hundreds  from  hunger,  thirst 
and  exhaustion,  and  the  means  for  relieving  the 
distress  are  very  scanty.  There  is  absolutely  no 
possibility  of  even  buying  bread.  The  first  contingent 
of  refugees  has  already  reached  this  place.  Owing  to 
congestion  on  the  roads,  the  human  tide  had  to  be 
broken  up  into  two  channels  :  about  100,000  walked 
through  the  plain  01  Abagha,  their  rear  being  guarded 
by  the  Russian  army  under  General  N.  and  the 
Armenian  regiments  under  Andranig  and  Dero ; 
another  50,000  from  the  city  of  Van  were  diverted 
into  Persia,  their  rear  being  defended  by  the  mounted 
regiments  of  Keri  and  Hamazasp.  Bloody  rear-guard 
actions  are  being  fought  to  stem  the  Turks  and  Kurds, 
wh  o  are  pressing  forward  in  order  to  cut  the  line  of 
retr  eat  of  the  Armenians." 

As  dreadful  a  spectacle,  to  the  eye,  as  that  which 
other  witnesses  were  beholding  at  Aleppo  or  at  the 
crossing  of  the  Murad  Su  ;  and  yet  what  a  differ- 
ence between  the  two  !  Those  fainting  exiles  from 
the  Anatolian  and  Cilician  towns  were  being  driven 
by  remorseless  enemies  to  a  lingering  death.  These 
peasants  of  Van  were  stumbling  forward  towards 
life  and  safety,  cheered  by  the  knowledge  that  the 
soldiers  of  a  friendly  nation  were  fighting,  and 
dying,  to  shield  their  escape.     Yet  they  had  still 


91 

much*  to  suffer  whan  they  reached  their  destinati  ': 

about  the  first  week  in  August,  1915. 

"All  measures  which  were  humauly  possible  to 
welcome  this  seething  mass  of  humanity  had  been 
taken  at  Etchmiadzin,  but  the  strain  was  beyond 
anticipation.  '  The  Fraternal  Aid '  Committee,  under 
the  presidency  of  the  Katholikos,  and  the  Medical 
Corps  were  fully  represented  ;  while  the  National 
Bureau  of  Tiflis,  and  the  Armenian  Committees  of 
Moscow,  Bakou  and  other  places,  as  well  as  various 
societies  and  unions,  had  sent  men  and  women 
workers.  All  these  tended  the  sick,  the  exhausted, 
the  motherless  children,  and  yet  with  all  this  fraternal 
aid  tendered  by  the  Russian  Armenians,  the  supply 
fell  far  short  of  the  need.  Cholera,  dysentery  and 
epotted  fever  soon  showed  themselves  in  a  virulent 
form  ;  while  the  scarcity  of  commodities  in  the 
Caucasus  and  local  difficulties  curtailed  the  measure 
of  succour  that  could  be  given." 

The  picture  is  heart-rending,  but  it  is  not  the 
same  picture  as  "  Der-el-Zor,"  and  the  bringers  of 
succour  are  gradually  beginning  to  cope  with  the 
need. 

"  About  20,000  orphan  children  have  already  been 
cared  for  ;  improvised  hospitals  have  been  opened  in 
many  localities;  hygienic  measures  have  been 
adopted  to  stamp  out  the  epidemics  through  which 
the  figure  of  mortality  reached  200  a  clay  early  in 
September.  Trainloads  of  flour,  sugar,  tea,  drugs, 
clothing  and  other  commodities  have  been  offered  by 
Armenians  throughout  Russia.  Prof.  Kishkin,  the 
plenipotentiary  of  the  Federation  of  Russian Zemstvos, 


92 

who  was  sent  to  Etchmiadzin  to  enquire  into  the 
condition  of  these  refugees,  describes  the  situation  as 
lamentable,  and  has  asked  for  £50,000  for  immediate 
needs.1'* 

Yet  from  one  point  of  \  iew  tliis  break-down  o£ 
assistance  is  a  factor  of  hope,  for  it  lias  happened 
because  the  stream  of  refugees  lias  been  so  great. 
X<>  less  than  250,000  Armenians  from  Turkey  have 
passed  alive  across  the  Russian  frontier — a  large 
company  compared  to  the  little  band  of  5,000  that 
has  found  its  way  to  Port  Said.  This  quarter  of  a 
million  of  homeless,  starving,  disease-stricken  people 
is  the  one  hope  and  stay  of  the  Armenian  race.  If 
they  can  be  saved  alive,  the  vitality  of  Armenia  will 
have  survived  the  hideous  attempt  of  the  expiring 
Turk  to  blot  her  out  for  ever  from  the  r.>]l  of 
nations. "j" 

*  Quoted  from  the  September  number  of  the  journal 
••  .1/  arat  "  of  London. 

t  The  ik  Armenian  Refugees  (Lord  Mayor's)  Fund  "  has 
been  organised  to  despatch  assistance  from  Great  Britain, 
and  there  is  really  no  limit  to  the  amount  of  money 
required.  Subscriptions  may  be  forwarded  to  the 
Hon.  Secretary  of  the  Fund  at  %,  Victoria  Street, 
London.  S.W. 


93 


VII.  THE  TOLL  OF  DEATH. 

A  quarter  of  a  million  of  the  Armenians  in 
Turkey  have  escaped.  But  how  many  have  been 
destroyed  ?  The  Young  Turks  and  their  api  dogisi  a 
in  Germany  and  elsewhere  will  probably  press  that 
question,  for  there  is  no  other  line  o£  apology  for 
them  to  adopt.  In  face  of  the  evidence  of  which 
we  have  presented  a  few  specimens  in  these  pages, 
they  will  hardly  have  the  face  to  deny  altogether 
that  this  crime  has  been  committed.  But  they  will 
submit  that  it  has  been  perpetrated  only  in  an 
exceptional  way,  and  on  a  comparatively  modest 
scale. 

That  would  be  as  shameless  a  lie  as  if  they 
attempted  nakedly  to  deny  it.  Numerical  statistics 
are  of  course  very  difficult  to  obtain,  for  a  criminal 
always  writhes  under  scrutiny,  and  in  view  of  the 
criminal  temper  of  the  Turks,  the  witnesses  have 
had  to  make  their  observations  in  a.i  unassuming 
Way,  so  as  to  give  the  murderers  no  indication  that 
note  of  their  actions  was  being  taken.  And  vet 
the  few  figures  we  have  speak  volumes. 

For  one  thing,  we  know  that  the  batches  of  de- 
ported Armenians  averaged  between  2,000  and  5,000 


94 

souls — this  we  have  from  many  eye-witnesses  who 
saw  i  hem  pass.  And  many  towns  provided  more  than 
(•Me  batch — a  witness  in  the  American  Committee's 
reporl  tells  us,  i'or  example,  that  the  third  convoy 
despatched  from  a  certain  town  included  bet  wean 
4.000  and  5,000  persons.  When  we  remember 
th  it  there  are  over  50  towns  and  villages,  known  to 
us  by  name,  from  which  the  Armenian  inhabitants 
have  thus  been  herded  away,  we  can  make  a 
general  estimate  of  the  total  number  condemned  to 
deportation  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Anatolia,  Cilicia  and  Armenia  proper. 

Here  are  some  actual  figures   compiled   on  June 
20th,  by  a  witness  in  Cilicia. 

"  The  deportation  began  some  six  weeks  ago  with 
180  families  from  Zeifcoun  ;  since  which  time  all  the 
inhabitants  of  that  place  and  its  neighbouring  villages 
have  been  deported  ;  also  most  of  the  Christians  in 
Albistan,  and  many  from  Hadjin,  Sis,  Kars  Pazar, 
Hassan  Beyli  and  Dort  Yol.  The  numbers  involved 
are  approximately,  to  date,  26,500.  Of  these,  about 
5,000  have  been  sent  to  the  Konia  region,  5,500  are  in 
Aleppo  and  surrounding  towns  and  villages,  and 
the  remainder  are  in  Der-el-Zor,  Rakka,  and  various 
places  in  Mesopotamia,  even  as  far  as  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Bagdad.  The  process  is  still  going 
on,  and  there  is  no  telling  how  far  it  may  be  carried. 
The  orders  already  issued  will  bring  the  number  in 


95 

(hi,-,  region  up^  to  32,000,  and  there  have  been  as 
none  exiled  from  Ainfcab,  and  \<:vy  few  from  Marash 
and  Ourfa."*— (A.C.R.) 

These  are  the  figures  for  a  comparatively  small 
portion  oi  the  whole  area  over  which  the  deportations 
are  being  carrier!  out  ;  and  they  only  cover  the  firsi 
Bix  weeks  of  a  process  which  has  been  continuing 
ever  since,  and  is  still  in  operation  at  this  present 
moment. 

And  here  are  later  statistics  in  confirmation. 
They  show  the  number  of  Armenians  deported 
from  sixteen  Cilician  towns  and  villages  (a  fraction 
only  of  the  district  included  in  the  survey  of  June 
20th  above),  who  passed  through  one  of  the  con- 
centration centres  up.  to  and  including  Julv  30th, 
1915. 

The  total  number. of  iamilies  was     ...  iM<;.\ 

The  total  number  of  individuals  was  1.3,255 
The  number  of  these   individuals   that 

was  seni  still  further  afield  was     ...  3,270 

(A.C.R.) 

Tines  13,255  individuals,  Erom  16  places  alone, 
passed  through  one  single  halting-place  ;  and  we 
have  no  record  of  the  others,  deported  from   the 


*  The   Armenians  oi'  Ourfa  (such  of  escapi  i 

murder    outright)   were   of        ■  latej    on. 

See  p.  t'd  above. 


96 

same  localities,  who  were  driven  towards  the 
desert  by  different  routes,  and  so  escaped  this 
particular  witness's  observation.  And  these  are 
far  from  being1  the  final  figures.  The  witness  him- 
self  adds  a  postcript  to  say  that  2,100  more  have 
arrived  since  his  list  was  made  up,  and  the 
deportations,  as  we  have  said,  have  been  carried  out 
continuously  ever  since. 

These  figures  may  show  how  many  started  on 
the  journey  ;  but  what  proportion  reached  their 
nominal  destination  ?  We  have  some  figures  on 
this  head  likewise  from  a  letter  dated  August  1 6th, 
1915,  and  written  from  the  interior  of  Anatolia  : 

"  In  haste  and  in  secret,  profiting  by  an  opportu- 
nity, I  hasten  to  convey  to  you  the  cry  of  agony 
which  goes  up  from  the  survivors  of  the  terrible 
crisis  through  which  we  are  passing  at  this  moment 
.  .  .  .  An  inquiry  has  proved  that  out  of  a 
thousand  who  started,  scarcely  100  have  reached  the 
place  from  which  I  am  writing.  Out  of  the  600  to  be 
accounted  for,  380  men  and  boys  above  1L  years  of 
age,  as  well  as  85  women,  have  been  massacred  or 
drowned  outside  the  town  walls  by  the  gendarmes  who 
conducted  them  ;  120  young  women  and  girls  and 
10  boys  have  been  kidnapped,  so  that  among  all  these 
deported  people  one  does  not  see  a  single  pretty  face. 
Among  the  survivors,  60  per  cent,  are  sick  ;  they  are 
shortly  to  be  forwarded  to  another  specified  locality, 
where  certain  death  awaits  them  ;  it  is  impossible  to 
describe  the  ferocity  to  which  they  have  been  exposed ; 


97 

they  have  been  travelling  for  from  three  to  five 
months  ;  they  have  been  pillaged  two— three— five- 
seven  times  ;  they  have  even  had  their  underclothes 
ransacked  ;  so  far  from  providing  them  with  food, 
they  even  forbid  them  to  drink  water  when  they  are 
passing  by  a  stream  ;  three-quarters  of  the  young 
women  and  girls  have  been  kidnapped  ;  the  rest  have 
been  compelled  to  spend  the  night  with  the  gen- 
darmes who  arc  conducting  them.  Hundreds  have 
died  of  these  outrages,  and  the  survivors  have  to  tell 
of  refinements  of  atrocity  so  disgusting  that  one  can- 
not bear  their  recital.'1 

The  same  hideous  crime  in  all  its  details,  with 
cold  statistics  to  leaven  the  tale  of  agony  !  The 
writer  remarks  that  it  is  "  no  hyperbole  to  say  that 
there  is  not  a  single  Armenian  left  in  Armenia,  and 
there  will  soon  be  none  left  in  Cilieia  either."  All 
had  been  taken,  and,  of  these.  60  per  cent,  had 
perished  before  they  arrive!  at  their  ultimate  goal. 
And  another  set  of  statistic-  completely  bears  out 
that  estimate.  We  know  that  nearly  1,<>00  people 
were  deported  from  a  certain  district  on  the  Kara 
Su,  and  here  is  an  analysis  of  their  "  experiences." 

••From  one  village  212  individuals  set  out,  of 
Khom  128  (60.  per  cent.)  reached  Aleppo  alive. 
56  men  and  11  women  were  killed  on  the  road, 
3  girls  and  9  boys  were  sold  or  kidnapped,  and 
5  people  were  missing. 

From  the  same  place  another  party  of  ti'.'o  people 
were  deported.     821   (46   per  cent.)  reached    A.leppo, 


08 

20G  men  and  57  women  were  killed  en  route.  70 
girls  and  young  women,  and  19  boys,  were  sold. 
23  were  missing. 

From  another  village  a  party  of  128  was  deported, 
of  whom  32  (25  per  cent.)  reached  Aleppo  alive. 
21  men  and  12  women  were  killed  en  route.  29 
girls  and  young  women  and  13  boys  were  sold  ;  and 
18  were  missing." 

This  document  bears  date  July  19th.  1915,  and 
is  signed  by  the  head  of  a  college,  who  is  a 
citizen  of  a  neutral  country,  and  is  in  a  position  to 
know  the  facts. 

Such  are  the  concordant  estimates  of  two  in- 
dependent witnesses  ;  and  anyone  who  reads  their 
narrative,  or  the  other  narratives  from  which  we 
have  quoted  above,  cannot  fail  to  conclude  for  him- 
self that  the  percentage  of  survivors  must  have  been 
extraordinarily  low.  Whatever  the  exact  statistics 
in  each  case,  certainly  nothing  but  a  remnant  evci- 
arrived  at  Sultanieh  or  Der-el-Zor.  The  va^t 
majority  always  perished  by  the  way.  Yet  we 
have  it  on  the  clear  authority  of  a  witness  in  the 
A.C.R.,  that  the  German  Consul  at  Aleppo — and 
surely  this  gentleman  would  not  be  guilty  of 
exaggeration  —  has  estimated  the  number  of 
Armenians  that  arrived  there,  at  no  less  than 
30,000.  Unfortunately  we  are  not  told  the  date 
to  which  this  figure  applies  :  but  even  if  it  were 


09 

the  final  figure  for  the  most  recent  date  attainable, 
it  would  prove  destruction  of  life  on  a  scale  which 
not  even  a  German  consul,  inured  to  the  statistics 
of  Belgium,  could  treat  as  exceptional  in  character 
or  inconsiderable  in  extent. 

\  et  even  if  the  statistics  were  more  abundant 
and  more  eloquent  still,  they  might  fail  to  convey 
to  our  imagination  the  actuality  of  what  has 
happened.  A  nation  blotted  out  !  It  is  easy  to 
say  it  with  the  lips,  more  difficult  to  realise  what 
it  means,  for  it  is  something  totally  beyond  our 
experience.  Perhaps  nothing  brings  it  home  more 
crushingly  than  the  record  which  we  have  of  one 
little  community  of  sensitive,  refined  Armenian 
people,  and  of  the  terrible  fates  by  which  they 
were  individually  overtaken.  They  were  the 
members  of  an  educational  establishment  in  a 
certain  Anatolian  town,  which  was  endowed  and 
directed  by  a  society  of  foreign  missionaries  ;  and 
the  following  summary  is  taken  directly  from  a 
letter  which  was  written  by  the  President  of  the 
College  after  the  blow  had  fallen. 

"  I  shall  try  to  banish  from  my  mind  for  the  time 
the  sense  of  great  personal  sorrow  because  of  losing 
hundreds  of  my  friends  here,  and  also  my  sense  of 
utter  defeat  in  being  so  unable  to  stop  the  awful 
tragedy  or  even  mitigate  to  any  degree  its  severity, 
and  compel  myself  to  give  you  concise^  some  of 


the  eoki  faces  of  the  past  months  as  they  relate 
themselves  to  the  College.  I  do  so  with  the  hope 
that  the  possession  of  these  concrete  facts  may  help 
you  to  do  something  there  for  the  handful  of 
dependents  still  left  to  us  here. 

"(i)  Constituency :  Approximately  two-thirds  of  the 
girl  pupils  and  six-sevenths  of  the  hoys  have  been 
taken  away  to  death,  exile  or  Moslem  homes. 

"(ii)  Professors:  Four  gone,  three  left,  as  follows  : 

"Professor  A.,  served  College  35  years.  Professor 
of  Turkish  and  History.  Besides  previous  trouble 
arrested  May  1st  without  charge,  hair  of  head, 
moustache  and  beard  prilled  out  in  vain  effort  to 
secure  damaging  confessions.  Starved  and  hung  by 
arms  for  a  day  and  a  night  and  severely  beaten 
several  times.  Taken  out  towards  Diyarbekir  abou 
June  20th  and  murdered  in  general  massacre  on  the 
road. 

"Professor'  B.,  served  College  33  years,  studied  at 
Ann  Arbor.  Professor  of  Mathematics,  arrested 
about  June  5th  and  shored  Professor  A.'s  fate  on  the 
road. 

"Professor  C,  taken  to  witness  a  man  beaten  almost 
to  death,  became  mentally  deranged.  Started  with 
his  family  about  July  5th  into  exile  under  guard  and 
murdered  beyond  the  first  big  town  on  the  road. 
(Principal  of  Preparatory  Department,  studied  at 
Princeton.)     Served  the  College  20  years. 

"Professor  D..  served  College  16  years,  studied  at 
Edinburgh,  Professor  of  Mental  and  Moral  Science. 
Awested  with  Professor  A.  and  suffered  same  fcorturi  s, 


LOI 

also  had  three  finger  nails  pulled  out  by  the  roots^ 
killed  in  same  massacre. 

" Professor  E.,  served  College  2~>  years,  arrested 
May  1st,  not  tortured  but  sick  in  prison.  Sent  to 
Red  Crescent  Hospital  and  after  paying  large  bribes 
is  now  free,  in -. 

"  Professor  F.,  served  the  College  for  over  15  years, 

studied  in  Stuttgart  and  Berlin,  Professor  of  Music, 
escaped  arrest  and  torture,  and  thus  far  escaped  exile 
and  death  because  of  favour  with  the  Kaim-makam 
secured  by  personal  services  rendered. 

"Professor  G.,  served  the  College  about  15  years, 
studied  at  Cornell  and  Yale  (M.S.),  Professor  of 
Biology,  arrested  about  June  5th,  beaten  about  the 
hands,  body  and  head  with  a  stick  by  the 
Kaim-makam  himself,  who.  when  tired,  called  on 
all  who  loved  religion  and  the  nation  to  continue 
the  beating  ;  after  a  period  of  insensibility  in  a  dark 
closet,  taken  to  the  Red  Crescent  Hospital  with  a 
broken   finger   and   serious   bruises.      Now   free,   in 


"  (iii)  Instructors,  Male. 

"Four  reported  killed  on  the  road  in  various 
massacres,  whose  average  term  of  service  is  eight 
years.  Three  not  heard  from,  probably  killed  on 
the  road,  average  term  of  eervice  in  the  College  four 
years. 

"Two  sick  in  Missionary  Hospital. 

"  One  in . 

"One  engaged  in  cabinet  work  for  the  Kaim-mak  m, 
free. 


102 

"  One  owner  of  house  occupied  by  the  Kaim-makam, 
free. 

"  (iv)  Instructors,  Female. 

"One  reported  killed  in  Chunkoosh,  served  the 
College  over  twenty  years. 

"  One  reported  taken  to  a  Turkish  harem. 

"  Three  not  beard  from. 

"  Fonr  started  out  as  exiles. 

"  Ten  free. 

"  Of  the  Armenian  people  as  a  whole  we  may  put 
an  estimate  that  three-fourths  are  gone,  and  this 
three-fourths  includes  the  leaders  in  every  walk  of 
life,  merchants,  professional  men,  preachers,  bishops 
and  government  officials     .... 

"  I  have  said  enough.  Our  hearts  are  sick  with 
the  sights  and  stories  of  abject  terror  and  suffering. 
The  extermination  of  the  race  seems  to  be  the 
objective,  and  the  means  employed  are  more  fiendish 
than  could  be  concocted  locally.  The  orders  are 
from  head-quarters,  and  any  reprieve  must  be  from 
the  .same  source " 

There  were  colleges  like  this,  well  staffed  and 
well  attended,  in  all  the  larger  Anatolian  towns. 
The  atmosphere  within  their  walls  was  every  bit 
as  refined,  as  cultured,  as  civilised  as  the  atmos- 
phere of  our  schools  and  colleges  in  Western 
Europe.  Their  humanising  influence  wTas  one  of 
the  most  beneficent  factors  in  the  Ottoman  Empire. 
And  this  influence  has  been  systematically  rooted 


103 

iap,  and  brutally  destroyed,  by  the  indiscriminate 
dispersion  and  massacre  of  both  pupils  and  pro- 
fessors. 

The  flower  of  the  nation  has  perished  in  com- 
pany with  the  innumerable  mass  of  undistinguished 
victims  ;  and  the  leaders  of  the  Armenian  Church 
have  drawn  on  themselves  the  especial  malice  of 
tiie  persecutor,  by  their  courageous  efforts  on  be- 
half of  their  Hocks.  On  Sept.  22nd  the  paper 
"Armenia"  of  Marseilles  reproduced  from  the 
'•  Hayasdan  "  of  Sofia  the  following  list  of 
ecclesiastical  victims  up  to  that  date  : 

"  The  metropolitan  of  Dijarbekir,  Tchilghadian — 
burnt  "alive. 

The  bishop  of  Ismid,  Hdvagimian — imprisoned. 

The  superior  of  the  seminary  at  Armacha — im- 
prisoned.* 

The  metropolitans  of  Broussaand  Kaisariyeh,  under 

arrest. 

T,he  metropolitan  of  Sivas,  [Calemkiarian — assas- 
sinated. 

The  metropolitan  of  Tokat;  Kasbarian  —  im- 
prisoned. 

The  metropolitan  of  Shabin-Karahissar,  Torikian  — 
hanged . 


*  The  letter  to  the  Armenian  ecclesiastic  in  neutral 
territory  states  thai  he  has  been  deponed  with  his  clergy 
and  seminarists. 


104 

The  metropolitan  of  Samsoua,  Hamazasb — im- 
prisoned. 

The  metropolitan  of  Trebizond,  Tourian — under 
arres 

The  metropolitan  of  Kemakh,  Humayak — im- 
prisoned. 

The  metropolitan  of  Kharpout,  Khorenian — assas- 
sinated.! 

The  metropolitan  of  Tchar-Sandjak,  Nalbandian — 
hanged. 

The  metropolitan!  of  Aleppo  and  Bitlis — im- 
prisoned. 

The  metropolitan  of  Erzeroum,  Bishop  Saadetian 
— assassinated." 

"  From  another  source",  says  the  "Armenia,"  "  we 
learn  that  the  metropolitan  of  Baibourt,  the  Archi- 
mandrite Anania  Hazarabedian,  has  been  hanged  in 
company  with  eight  Armenian  notables."  J 

It  is  an  amazing  list,  yet  it  is  wholly  consistent 
with  the  programme  of  the  Ottoman  Government. 
The  Armenian  Church  has  bsen  the  bulwark  of  the 
Armenian  race,   and  the  race  is  marked  down  for 

*  As  stated  by  ';  Gotclmag  "  on  Sept.  4th. 

t  Corroborated  by  the  letter  to  the  Armenian  ecclesiastic 
in  neutral  territory. 

%  Corroborated   by    the  letter  to  the  Armenian  Eccle- 
siastic. 


105 

extermination.  Talaat  Bey  meant  what  he  said, 
and  the  Young  Turks  have  given  a  sardonic  touch 
of  completeness  to  their  work  by  murdering  the 
two  Armenian  representatives  in  their  much- 
advertised  "Ottoman  Parliament".  The  letter  to 
the  Armenian  ecclesiastic  in  neutral  territory  ia- 
forme  us  that  "MM.  Zohrab  and  Vartkes,  the 
Armenian  deputies,  who  had  been  sent  on  their 
way  to  Diyarbekir  for  trial  by  court-martial,  were 
killed  the  other  day  near  Aleppo  before  reaching 
their  destination."  Ahd-ul-Hamid  would  smile 
again  if  he  heard. 


106 


VIII.    THE    ATTITUDE    OF 

GERMANY. 

"  The  orders  are  from  head-quarters,"  writes  one 
of  the  witnesses  quoted  in  the  last  chapter,  "  and 
any  reprieve  must  be  from  the  same  source."  But 
where  are  these  "  head-quarters  "  ?  For  it  is  vitally 
important  to  penetrate  to  them,  if  the  remnant  of 
the  Armenians  that  are  lingering  in  agony  at 
Sultanieh  and  Der-el-Zor,  are  still  to  be  rescued 
from  their  doom.  We  have  traced  the  crime  back 
to  Enver  and  his  gang  at  Constantinople,  but  that 
is  not  enough.  By  participating  in  the  war, 
Turkey  contracted  herself  into  the  apprenticeship 
of  Germany,  and  abandoned  her  freedom  of  action 
to  Germany's  lead.  What  is  the  attitude  of 
Turkey's  patron  towards  the  organised  murder  of 
the  Armenian  race  ?  And  what  action  has  been 
taken  in  the  matter  by  the  corps  of  German 
officials  on  Ottoman  territory  ? 

"  According  to  the  testimony  of  the  refugees  from 
Syria,  several  German  consuls  have  directed  or 
encouraged  the  massacres  of  the  Armenians.  Special 
mention  is  made  of  Herr  Rossler.  consul  at  Aleppo,* 
who  has  gone  to  Aintab  to  direct  the  massacres  in 

*  '•  The  man  who  contrived  the  plot  against  unfortunate 
Zeitoun." 


107 

person,  and  the  notorious  Baron  Oppenheim,  who 
initiated  the  idea  of  deporting  to  Ourfa  the  women 
and  children  belonging  by  nationality  to  the  Allies, 
though  he  knew  well  enough  that  these  unfortunates 
would  be  unable  to  avoid  witnessing  there  Hie 
barbarous  acts  committed  by  the  troops  in  the  very 
streets  of  the  town,  which  are  literally  drenched  in 
blood." 

That  is  a  sinister  rumour,  but  of  course  it  is  not 
evidence  of  a  conclusive  order.  Tt  is  merely  a 
cablegram  from  Cairo  which  was  published  towards 
the  end  of  September  in  the  Paris  press.  We  find 
the  same  suspicion,  however,  reappearing  in  the 
"  Gotchnag  "  of  New  York  on  September  4th  : 

"A  foreign  correspondent  reports  that  provincial 
governors  who  show  lack  of  vigour  in  executing 
the  order  to  deport  the  Armenians,  are  taken  to 
task  by  the  German  officials.  The  latter  participate 
in  the  execution  of  the  deportation  scheme,  and 
redouble  its  rigours.  The  correspondent  declares, 
on  the  basis  of  such  evidence  as  this,  that  this  plan 
of  exterminating  the  Armenians  his  been  conceived 
by  the  Germans,  and  that  it  has  been  put  into 
execution  on  their  advice." 

Everyone  will  see  that  these  testimonies  are  not 
of  the  same  value  as  those  on  which  our  narrative 
of  the  crime  itself  is  based.  The  active  parti- 
cipation of  German  officials  is  not  sufficiently 
proven  ;  and  even  if  further  evidence  should  con- 
vict Herr  Rossler  and  Baron  Oppenheim  beyond 


108 

any  doubt,  we  should  still  have  no  warrant  for 
accepting  the  inference  of  u  (lotrluvujs "  corres- 
pondent as  to  the  general  complicity  of  all  German 
officials  in  Anatolia.  It  is,  on  the  whole,  unlikely 
that  the  German  authorities  initiated  the  crime. 
The  Turks  do  not  need  tempters.  But  when  that 
has  been  said,  all  that  can  be  submitted  in  their 
defence  has  been  exhausted  ;  and  if  faint  praise 
is  damning,  they  assuredly  stand  condemned. 
For  it  is  clear  that,  whoever  commanded  the 
atrocities,  the  Germans  never  made  a  motion  to 
countermand  them,  when  they  could  have  been 
stopped  at  the  start  by  a  single  word.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  they  could  have  been 
stopped  absolutely,  for  it  is  obvious  that,  by 
entering  the  war,  Turkey  placed  herself  entirely 
in  Germany's  power.  She  is  dependent  on  Ger- 
many for  munitions  of  war  and  leadership  in  battle, 
for  the  preservation  of  her  existence  at  the  present 
and  for  its  continuance  in  the  future,  should 
Germany  succeed  in  preserving  it  now.  The 
German  Government  had  but  to  pronounce  the 
veto,  and  it  would  have  been  obeyed  ;  and  the 
central  authorities  at  Berlin  could  have  ensured  its 
being  obeyed  through  their  local  agents  on  the 
spot.  For  ever  since  1895,  Germany  has  been 
assiduously  extending  the  network  of  her  consular 


£09 

service  over  all  the  Asiatic  provinces  of  the 
Ottoman  Empire.  In  every  administrative  centre 
throughout  those  districts  where  massacres  and  depor- 
tations have  occurred — in  Anatolia,  CUicia,  and 
Armenia  /'roper — there  is  a  German  consid;  and  tiie 
prestige  of  these  consuls  is  unbounded.  They  are 
the  agents  of  a  friendly  power,  the  only  power  that 
offers  Turkey  her  friendship  with  no  moral  con- 
ditions attached  ;  and  a  friend,  moreover,  that  is 
Turkey's  puissant  protector  and  ally,  the  invincible 
conqueror,  to  the  Turk's  docile  imagination,  of 
a  hostile  world  in  arms  against  the  pair.  It  is 
impossible  to  doubt  that  those  German  consuls 
could  have  saved  the  Armenian  nation,  if  they  had 
taken  steps  to  do  so,  or  to  suppose  that  the 
German  Government  was  not  informed  of  what 
was  happening  in  good  time. 

The   consuls   did    not  take  any  action,   and  we 
know  the  reason  why.     They  were  instructed  from 

"  headquarters  "  to  hold  their  hand. 

"  Last  July  the  United  States  Government  invited 
the  co-operation  of  the  German  Government  in  an 
effort  to  end  the  outrages  which  have  resulted  in 
wholesale  and  systematic  murder  of  fully  one  half 
of  the  million  and  a  quarter  Armenians  living  under 
Turkish  control 

"  No  reply  ever  was  received  from  Germany  to  the 
invitation  to  co-operate  in  this  work." 


110 

This  statement  was  published  by  the  New  York 
"  Merahi  "  on  October  <5th,  1915.     It  has  not  been 

challenged  yet  ;  and  the  identical  standpoint 
adopted  by  German  officials  of  every  grade  un- 
mistakeably-  reflects  the  German  Government's 
deliberate  policy.* 

It  the  German  consuls  on  the  spot  remained 
criminally  apathetic,  it  was  because  their  chief  at 
Constantinople  gave  them  the  cue 

"  The  American  Ambassador  afc  Constantinople, 
after  asking  the  Turkish  Government  in  vain  to  stop 
the  massacres,  proceeded  to  address  himself  to  the 
German  Ambassador  ;  but  Herr  Wangenheim  declared 
that  he  could  not  interfere  in  any  way  with  Turkey's 
internal  affairs." 


*  This  policy  must  not,  of  course,  be  taken  to  express 
the  sentiments  of  the  German  people  as  a  whole.  The 
testimony  of  a  German  Sister  of  Meicy  and  of  German 
missionaries  shows  that  they  were  no  less  horrified  at  the 
atrocities  than  the  American  missionaries.  So  would  all 
humane  people  be  in  Germany  itself,  if  they  knew  the 
naked  facts — facts  which  it  is  not  likely  that  their 
Government  will  permit  them  to  learn.  The  Government 
succeeded  in  keeping  from  the  people  the  knowledge  of 
the  truth  with  regard  to  the  massacres  of  18S5-6,  when  a 
well-drilled  press  announced  that  the  Armenian  horrors 
were  invented  by  the  English  to  serve  some  selfish  purpose 
of  their  own. 


Ill 

That  is  a  quotation   from  the  previous!}    cited 

letter  written  from  Athens  on  July  8th.  1915.  It 
is  only  a  rumour,  of  course,  andHerr  Wangenheim* 
might  have  contradicted  it  had  he  wished  to  do  so  ; 
but  he  would  hardly  have  found  it  worth  his 
while,  in  view  of  the  pronouncements  hazarded 
by  his  more  conspicuous  colleague  ai  Washington, 
Count  BernstorfTs  first  inspiration  was  to  deny 
the  crime  altogether.  "The  alleged  atrocities 
committed  in  the  Ottoman  Empire  appeal-  to  be 
pure  inventions,"  he  declared.  Armenia  is  more 
remote  than  Belgium,  and  what  happens  there 
is  apt  to  be  veiled  in  corresponding  obscurity. 
But  in  this  ease  the  light  has  broken  through,  and 
Las  driven  Count  Bernstorff  to  revise  his  posture. 
After  further  conference  with  his  principals  in 
Europe  he 

"  submitted  to  the  United  States  Government  a  report 
of  the  German  Consul  General  at  Trebizond  admitting 
and  defending  a  massacre  of  Armenians  on  the 
ground  that  the  Armenians  were  disloyal  to  the 
Turkish  Government  and  secretly  were  aiding  and 
abetting  Russia." 

There  is  no  doubt  about  these  "demarches"  of 
the  Ambassador  at  Washington.  They  have  struck 
the    attention     of    the     nation    to     which    he    is 


He  has  died  in  the  meantime. 


112 

accredited,  and  are  written  large  over  the  editorial 
columns  of  the  American  press.* 

And  then  there  is  the  Imperial  Chancellor  him- 
self. When  the  first  year  of  the  German  war,  and 
the  fourth  month  of  the  Armenian  atrocities,  had 
completed  their  parallel  cycle,  and  he  addressed  the 
Reichstag  in  review  of  the  situation,  he  took 
occasion  to  congratulate  his  countrymen  on  "  their 
marvellous  regeneration  of  Turkey."  Could  any 
endorsement  of  Enver's  "  solution "  be  more 
unqualified  ? 

Having  satisfied  ourselves  thus  as  to  the  attitude 
of  German  "Official  Circles,"  we  will  now  let 
some  individual  Germans  express  their  opinion  for 
a  moment  through  the  mouthpiece  of  their  press. 

"The  Armenian,"  writes  the  "Frankfurter 
Zeitung"  on  October  9th,  "enjoys,  through  his 
higher  intellect  and  superior  commercial  ability,  a 
constant  business  advantage  in  trade,  tax-farming, 
banking,  and  ( ommission-agency  over  the  heavy- 
footed  Turk,  and  so  accumulates  money  in  hia 
pocket,  while  the  Turk  grows  poor.  That  is  why  the 
Armenian  is  the  best-hated  man  in  the  East — in 
many  cases  not  unjustly,  though  a  generalisation 
would  De  unfair.     It  is  easily  understandable,  how- 

*  The  quotation  from  the  New  York  "  Herald  "  is  taken 
at  random  from  several  dozen  leading  articles  of  identical 
purport  in  as  many  other  journals. 


lis 

ever,  that  the  uneducated  populace  in  Anatolia,  wiih 
half-educated  officials,  fanatical  Moslem  ecclesiastics, 

and  hot-headed  chauvinists  at  their  head,  should  fall 
victims  to  Buch  a  generalisation,  and  destroy  the 
innocent  with  the  guilty 

"The  difficulties  that  confront  the  Turkish  Govern- 
ment in  the  Armenian  question,  must  not  be  under- 
estimated. There  is  the  lack  of  good  communications 
in  Anatolia,  the  niter  absence  of  all  initiative  in 
the  lesser  grades  of  officialdom,  the  fury  of  the 
•populace 

••  But  in  spite  of  these  difficulties  the  TurJ 
Government  must  gather  the  reins  into  its  hands. 
.  .  .  .  The  publie  opinion  of  Germany  is  firmly 
convinced  that  the  Allied  Government,  after  dis- 
playing to  the  world  so  magnificently  its  external 
strength,  will  now  give  proof  of  in  internal  strength 
as  well." 

The  "  Frankfurter  "  is  a  liberally-minded   paper, 
and  we  ffive  it  all  honour  for  its  sentiments  and  its 

S3 

admonitions.  But  ;\uy  one  who  1ms  read  these 
pages  will  perceive  that,  whether  half- wilfully  or 
not,  it  has  drawn  for  itself  an  entirely  erroneous 
picture  of  the  situation.  "  The  Lesser  officials'  lack 
of  initiative"' — that  would  be  a  reasonable  miti- 
gation if  the  crime  were  an  outburst  of  fanaticism 
from   below  :      but  it  tells  the  other  way  if  the 


*  That  there  has  been  no  general  outburst  of  this  kind 
is  not  the  fault  of  Germany,  whose  professors  have 
recklessly  been  preaching  the  Pan-Islamic  Jihad  (Holy 
War),  with  all  its  implications  of  hatred  and  passion. 


114 

crime  has  been  organised  from  above.  And  are 
the  communications  of  Anatolia  so  bad  ?  They 
did  well  enough  for  the  Turkish  mouhadjirs.  And 
even  if  roads  and  railways  are  scarce,  telegraphs 
are  not.  Every  big  town  is  in  telegraphic 
communication  with  Constantinople.  Along  these 
very  wires  Enver  and  Talaat  radiated  their 
peremptory  signal  to  their  automaton-like  sub- 
ordinates ;  and  Herr  Wangenheim  (if  von  Jagow 
had  given  the  word)  might  have  issued  as  many 
telegraphic  counter-orders  to  his  energetic  German 
consuls,  whose  initiative  in  their  own  spheres 
(whatever  may  be  the  case  with  their  local  Turkish 
compeers)  has  certainly  never  been  called  in 
question. 

No,  if  the  "  Frankfurter  Zeitung "  represents 
public  opinion  in  Germany,  then  the  German 
people  is  simply  ignorant  of  the  facts.  Yet  there 
are  some  publicists,  at  any  rate,  who  are  better 
informed. 

"  If  the  Porte  considers  it  necessary  that  Armenian 
insurrections  and  other  goings  on  should  be  crushed 
by  every  means  available,  so  as  to  exclude  all 
possibility  of  their  repetition,  then  that  is  no  'murder' 
and  no  'atrocity,'  but  simply  measures  of  a  justifiable 
and  necessary  kind." 

Thus  writes  Ccunfc  Ernst  von  Reventlow  in  the 
"  Deutscher  Tageszeitwig"  and  he  has  formulated 


115 

against  his  country  a  charge  of  complicity  in  the 
crime  which  we  might  have  hesitated  to  bring 
against  her  ourselves. 

"  Germany  cannot  intervene  in  the  internal 
affairs  of  her  ally."  That  is  how  the  conclusion 
was  expressed  by  the  German  Ambassador  at 
Constantinople.  But  we  can  hardly  leave  it  at 
that.  Is  Germany's  motive  in  complicity  really 
no  more  than  a  disinterested  consideration  for  the 
sensibilities  of  her  Turkish  partner  ?  ';  The 
Armenian,"  as  we  have  quoted  from  the  "  Frank- 
furter Zeitung "  "is  the  best  hated  man  in  the 
East  on  account  of  his  higher  intellect  and  superior 
commercial  ability."  Well,'  now  the  Armenian, 
with  all  his  talents,  has  been  removed,  and  here 
is  the  consequence,  as  it  is  set  forth  by  a  witness 
in  the  American  Committee's  Report:  — 

"  The  results  (of  the  crime)  are  that,  as  90  per  cent, 
of  the  commerce  of  the  interior  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
Armenians,  the  country  is  facing  ruin.  The  great 
bulk  of  business  being  done  on  credit,  hundreds  of 
prominent  business  men  other  than  Armenians  are 
facing  bankruptcy.  There  will  not  be  left  in  the 
places  evacuated  a  single  tanner,  moulder,  black- 
smith, tailor,  carpenter,  clay-worker,  weaver, 
shoemaker,  jeweller,  pharmacist,  doctor,  lawyer  or 
any  of  the  professional  men  or  tradesmen,  with  very 
few  exceptions,  and  the  country  will  be  left  in  a 
practically  helpless  afcatft."     (A  0.h\) 


116 

Who  profits  ?  Certainly  not  the  Turk,  however 
much  it  may  gratify  his  envy.  The  Armenians, 
as  we  have  emphasised  again  and  again,  were  the 
only  native  element  in  the  Ottoman  Empire  with 
a  European  training  and  a  European  character. 
They  alone,  by  this  "  higher  intellect  and  superior 
business  ability,"  were  capable  of  regenerating  the 
Empire  from  within,  and  raising  it  to  the  level  of 
an  organised,  civilized,  modern  state.  As  it  is, 
that  possibility  has  been  destroyed  for  ever,  and 
the  country  has  been  "  left  in  a  practically  helpless 
condition."  Who  profits  ?  Not  the  Armenian,  not 
the  Turk.  The  Armenians,  had  they  been  spared, 
were  destined  to  occupy  a  very  desirable  "  place  in 
the  sun,"  to  their  own  profit  and  to  the  benefit  of 
their  Turkish  neighbours.  Are  the  Germans  to 
be  their  heirs  and  executors,  and  is  that  the 
"  Regeneration  of  Turkey,"  to  which  the  Imperial 
Chancellor  alluded  so  paradoxically  in  August, 
1915  ? 

This  brings  us  face  to-  face  with  a  question 
which  we  have  been  approaching  very  gradually, 
without  the  possibility  of  drawing  back.  But  we 
hasten  to  add  that  the  question  is  still  an  open 
one.  Even  at  this  eleventh  hour,  Germany  may 
provide  us  with  an  answer  that  we  should 
welcome  all  the  more  because  of  the  very  faintness 
of  our  hope,  if  she  will  only  stretch  forth  her  hand 


117 

and    save   the   Armenians    that    remain,   from  the 
doom  of  the  murdered  majority. 

But  whatever  Germany  does,  she  must  do  it 
quickly,  not  only  in  order  to  snatch  the  last 
victims  from  the  jaws  of  death,  but  because  the 
judgment  of  hummity  refuses  to  tarry,  and  is 
already  going  forth  over  all  lands. 

"  This  shameful  and.  terrible  page  of  modern 
history  which  is  unfolding  in  distant  Armenia  is 
nothing  but  an  echo  and  an  extension  of  the  main 
story,  the  central  narrative,  which  must  describa  the 
German  incursion  into  Belgium  fourteen  months  ago. 
That  was  the  determining  act,  that  was  the  signal  to 
Turk  and  Kurd 

"  To-day  the  world  looks  neither  with  surprisa  nor 
with  incredulity  at  the  terrible  history  that  come3  to 
us  from  the  remoter  regions  of  Asia  Minor 

"  This  thing  that  Germany  has  done  in  the  world 
is  not  a  mere  injury  to  written  law.  That  is  but  a 
minor  detail.  .What  she  has  done  is  to  bring  us  all 
back  in  the  Twentieth  Century  to  the  condition  of 
the  dark  ages."* 

That  is  the  indictment.   Let  Germany 
cease  to  deserve  it. 


*  From  the  New  York  "Tribune"  of  October  8th,  1915 


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